


an extra passenger

by alatarmaia4



Series: Vessel 'Verse [9]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, all of the characters in this are trans, am i going to explain how the timeline works? NOPE, and i am indulging myself during quarantine, f•ck joanne, it is dumb shit center, it's not mentioned because it's not relevant to harry's journey, look it's the supernatural revival anything goes, will i address whether the harry potter books exist for the supernatural characters or not? ALSO NO
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:48:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 24,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27763267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alatarmaia4/pseuds/alatarmaia4
Summary: A drabble I picked up after years. Originally written while I was working on the Accidental Vessel, and more or less that premise but slightly to the left. Aka, Gabriel's still possessing Harry, but THIS time Harry's alive and awake for it. Also, Gabriel's a little lower on power than he was in the other story.Shenanigans ensue.
Series: Vessel 'Verse [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/310767
Comments: 69
Kudos: 83





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Thanks to copperbadge for this great note-
> 
> I condemn JK Rowling’s recent transphobic, inaccurate, and dangerous statements on sex and gender identity. If you agree with her views, please do not read, comment on, or kudo this fanfic. I support the rights of transgender people to be called by their chosen pronouns, respected in their expression of gender, and treated fairly and equally in all things.

Harry wasn’t surprised that he was being called to Dumbledore’s office, alone. 

He was still shaking a little, all the way up. It had only been a day since the incident at the Ministry, and his heart hadn’t stopped beating like a drum. It had been such a near miss with Sirius almost falling through that strange archway - and now, of course, he wasn’t any less anxious at the prospect of having to explain himself.

When Harry got into the office (the password was Fizzing Whizzbees), he was surprised to find that Dumbledore wasn’t alone. Snape was there, too.

“Harry,” Dumbledore greeted him. He was actually looking at him, for the first time in a long time. “Please sit down.”

Harry took the seat in front of the desk. “Why’s Professor Snape here, sir?” He questioned warily.

“I am here because the Headmaster finally believes me when I say there is something you are hiding from me,” said Snape. “Your skill with Occlumency is no accident, and after what happened at the Ministry, I refuse to let it go unaddressed.”

“You mean Voldemort,” said Harry. “What  _ did  _ happen?” 

“I rather thought you might know,” said Dumbledore. He had arrived just in time to witness it. “He appeared to attack you - I believe he meant to possess you - and then something caused him enough pain to make him very suddenly depart.”

_ “Possess  _ me?”

“Indeed. Voldemort has spent years delving ever deeper into the Dark Arts. I was surprised you managed to repell him so easily.”

“Oh,” said Harry. “Well...knowing what he was doing, I’m a little surprised too.” But not very much. “Why are you telling me this? Sir.”

Dumbledore smiled faintly. “I know we have not spoken often this year. I apologize for that. I hope that my reasoning will soon become clear, but before we discuss anything so honestly as I had planned on, I would like to address Professor Snape’s concerns.”

Harry still didn’t understand why on Earth Snape was ‘concerned’ about him, and he didn’t really believe it either, but obviously Dumbledore did. He swallowed nervously. He had hoped that maybe Snape hadn’t noticed anything odd, digging around in his memories during Occlumency lessons.

“I have asked Professor Snape to be here,” said Dumbledore, “because, Harry, I am afraid something may already be in your mind that we don’t know about.”

“That  _ you _ don’t know about,” said Harry. Snape stared; Dumbledore frowned.

“Perhaps you could explain,” was all the headmaster said.

Harry made himself put his hands down so he stopped fidgeting like he was nervous. Even though he  _ was  _ nervous. He hadn’t been able to talk with Gabriel since returning from the Ministry, so he was flying blind. He just had to hope it was alright.

“When I was a kid,” Harry blurted out, just to get it over with, “I, er - heard voices? Just the one, not voices, plural. And eventually he introduced himself, when I got old enough to start wondering if I was crazy because I’d figured out that wasn’t normal, and he asked if it was alright that he was there, and I asked him where he’d come from. He said my mum summoned him. He didn’t know what for since he...” Harry swallowed. “He didn’t get a chance to ask her. But he said something went wrong, since she probably didn’t  _ mean  _ for it to end up...you know. Like this.”

Dumbledore steepled his fingers. “Let me see if I am following,” he said. “You are, as far as you know, already possessed?”

“...Yes,” Harry admitted quietly.

“And this parasite has been there since you were a year old.”

“He’s not a  _ parasite,”  _ said Harry defensively. “He saved Sirius’ life!”

Dumbledore looked surprised. “How can you be sure of that?”

“Because it wasn’t  _ me.  _ I couldn’t react in time.” But nevertheless, Harry had found himself teleporting across half a room and shoving Sirius bodily out of the way of a spell that, Harry realized afterwards, might have forced him back through the ominous, empty archway. “I know what it feels like when Gabriel does something for me.”

“You  _ know?  _ Has he acted for you before, this Gabriel?”

“Not often, but-”

“Harry, I can’t overstate how  _ exceedingly  _ dangerous that is.”

“I know,” Harry said in frustration, “but I was  _ going  _ to say, it’s not like when Ginny was possessed. I was worried about it, too, but it  _ isn’t.  _ I’ve never lost time like Ginny did, and I knew who he was and what he was doing and why he was there. Voldemort didn’t tell Ginny anything except to trick her.”

“And you believe you are  _ not  _ being tricked?”

“If I were, I figure he’d probably have been caught in a lie sometime in the last fourteen years,” said Harry, unable to stop himself from being sarcastic. He winced. “Sorry - I just mean, I’ve  _ lived  _ with him, sir. I know what it sounds like, but of course I don’t doubt him. He saved Sirius’ life, and he’s done a million other things. He tried to heal me when I got bitten by the basilisk, two years ago, and he’s made living with the Dursleys a thousand times more bearable.”

“What exactly does this ‘Gabriel’ claim to be?” Snape asked, deeply suspicious. “There are several known mind-parasites known to wizards,  _ none  _ of them benevolent.”

“I don’t know.” Harry shrugged. “He said my mum summoned him, and he remembered some of what the summoning circle looked like.”

“Summoning circle?” Dumbledore repeated.

“That’s what he called it. He drew it out for me once, and I showed it to Hermione, and  _ she  _ said it looked like something her Ancient Runes professor would give them as a puzzle. But she couldn’t figure it out,” Harry admitted. “Gabriel left a lot of blank spots.”

Dumbledore looked grave. “Harry,” he said gently, “if Gabriel were truly benevolent, why would you not tell us about him before now?”

“Surely the thing encouraged him to keep it secret,” Snape grumbled.

“He said he was afraid you’d try to get rid of him,” Harry said. “Kill him or something. I - I was kind of afraid too.”

Snape scoffed. Dumbledore sighed.

“May I ask why?” Dumbledore’s tone wasn’t condescending, but Harry still felt as though he were being treated like a little kid. 

Harry tried to think over his answer. “I do know what this sounds like,” he said quietly. “After what happened to Ginny I thought about it a lot, and Gabriel and I talked about it. I was afraid you’d only see something like what happened to her, and assume I was crazy and wasn’t in my right mind. And...

“I don’t know. I don’t think I  _ am  _ thinking the way I would if this had happened recently. But I’ve lived with Gabriel my whole life. This must be my right mind because it’s the only one I’ve ever had. He could have taken over my body when I was a baby and done  _ anything _ , probably, I don’t think babies are very sturdy and Aunt Petunia probably wouldn’t have stopped him _. _ But all he did was help me stay out of Dudley’s way and try to make friends at school. And he never did it for me, just...talked to me.” Harry looked up at Dumbledore. “Isn’t there something I could do to prove to you I have a reason to trust him?”

Now Dumbledore only looked sorrowful. “I understand this all seems very rational to you,” he said, “but people have a way of rationalizing these kinds of situations to themselves. Even if your mother  _ did  _ summon something-”

“Do you know if she did? Sir.”

Dumbledore glanced at Snape, and that was telling enough. “It may align with some unanswered questions, about that night,” Dumbledore allowed. “But it does not prove that this Gabriel has not tricked you in some way.”

“You could talk to him,” Harry offered impulsively. “I mean, not  _ right  _ now-”

“To give it time to prepare its defense?” Snape sneered.

“Because he’s not talking to me right now,” Harry said angrily. “This happens every time he does something big, like trying to heal me or help me get away from the Dementors. He goes quiet and I don’t hear or feel anything from him for days.”

That seemed to be odd enough to confuse even Dumbledore. Or at least, he gave Snape another significant look instead of immediately answering. 

“There are avenues of research I can look into,” Snape said grudgingly, answering whatever question he saw in the look.

“I believe that would be helpful,” said Dumbledore. He turned back to Harry. “In light of all this, I believe it may be best if you were to return to Grimmauld Place for a few days, once the school year ends.”

Harry brightened. He hadn’t anticipated  _ that  _ reaction. “That’s good,” he said in relief. “Then I can explain to Sirius what happened.”

“I think I can notify Sirius a little sooner than that.” Dumbledore observed Harry over his half-moon glasses for a moment. “Do you understand the severity of this situation, Harry?”

Harry drooped again. “Yes, sir,” he said, though what he really understood was why Dumbledore was taking it so seriously. “But if you’re willing to wait until I’m back at Grimmauld Place, you  _ could  _ talk to Gabriel then. I think he’ll be awake by then.”

“Hm,” was all Dumbledore said in reply. “In the meantime, I think it may be wise to have Miss Granger and Mr. Weasley keep an eye on you, just in case.”

“...You mean tell them about Gabriel? I was already going to do that.”

“Oh?”

“Why wouldn’t I tell them about him, if I’ve already told you?” And Snape, Harry didn’t say. He wished the potions professor hadn’t been present for the conversation, but it wasn’t like he could have asked Dumbledore to send him away. “Oh - sir, if you were about to dismiss me...”

“Yes, Harry?”

“I was going to say I know why Voldemort gave up so fast,” said Harry. “If he tried to possess me, I don’t know if there just wasn’t space, but that would involve seeing into my mind, right?”

“To some degree, yes, he would be able to access your thoughts if he tried to share the same mind with you.”

“Right,” said Harry. “So that makes perfect sense. He must have seen Gabriel’s instead. He - I mean,  _ Gabriel  _ said that during Occlumency he had to be really careful not to let Snape see anything that would hurt him.”

“Professor Snape, Harry.”

“A likely story,” Snape said, looking at Harry as though the explanation had purposefully offended him. “Obviously he was just trying to avoid my finding out about his presence.”

“Well, if he did, it obviously didn’t work,” Harry replied, taking some satisfaction in making Snape scowl. “But it hurt Voldemort to look, didn’t it? I don’t see why doing the same thing wouldn’t have hurt you, too.”

“Did Gabriel offer an explanation for this phenomenon?” Dumbledore asked, still grave.

“Yes, he said...well, basically, his mind was too inhuman and interacting with it hurt because a person’s brain would try really hard to understand it but couldn’t.”

“Have you ever experienced this?”

“No,” Harry said immediately, then frowned. “Well, the Dementors kind of hurt, but that was a special case. I think they affected him as much as they did me.”

Dumbledore sighed. “I will think about this further,” he said. “We will discuss this at Grimmauld Place.”

Harry got up at the clear dismissal. He was already starting to worry over having to explain all of it again to Ron and Hermione.

* * *

Ron and Hermione turned into them  _ and  _ Ginny,  _ and  _ Luna and Neville just in case. Ginny was there because she was the only one who’d been possessed before, and Luna and Neville came because they’d all been at the Ministry, so it made sense that the six of them should all be in it together.

Ginny took it the best, actually. When Ron, frustrated, demanded to know why, she turned a fierce glare on him.

“When _I_ was possessed it felt awful,” she said, “even if I didn’t know what was going on. It was horrible and there was nothing good about it. But Harry’s not losing any time, and he says his _mum_ summoned this thing, so if he says he trusts it, I’m going to believe him. Besides he’s got the rest of you watching, and if this thing _does_ turn out evil-” She turned on Harry and stabbed a finger at his chest- “You tell it that I’m not above casting a Bat-Bogey Hex on you, too.”

“Sure,” Harry said warily, “but I think he can guess that already, he’s seen you cast it.”

“What? How?”

“Well, he pays attention.” Seeing everybody’s confused looks, Harry elaborated. “Just because he’s not the one directing what my body does doesn’t mean he’s not in it. I know he can see and hear things going on around me because he’ll say things about it.”

“Do you mean,” said Hermione, “that he’s been  _ watching  _ us all this time?”

“Not all the time,” said Harry in disgust. “I mean, I’ve got to go to the bathroom and things like that.” 

“What about right now?” Asked Neville anxiously. “Is he listening to us talk about him?”

“I don’t think so, but that’s because he’s not doing anything at all, as far as I can tell. It’s like I told you, he won’t respond after doing big things like what happened at the Ministry.”

“Well, tell us as soon as you hear from him,” Hermione instructed Harry. “If we have to brainstorm ideas about what to do if he does something to you-”

“He’s  _ not  _ going to do anything to me, he’s helped me save most of your lives in the last four years!” 

But none of them, not even Ginny, seemed willing to entirely believe Harry. It was in a frustrated cloud of anxiety that Harry boarded the Hogwarts Express the next day, the five of them squeezing into the same compartment as him and the conversation stilted all the way back to King’s Cross. 

There were three familiar faces waiting when Harry got off at the platform: Mad-Eye Moody, Tonks, and Sirius - in dog form. As soon as he saw Harry, he rushed forward, sniffing anxiously at him. Harry clamped his mouth shut and went over to the other two.

“Potter,” said Mad-Eye gruffly. Both eyes were trained on him, and the magical one stayed watching even when Mad-Eye glanced away to suspiciously survey the crowd on the platform. 

The feeling of being watched didn’t go away. Harry went with the three Order members, and his friends went off to find their families and go home. He didn’t get the chance to ask if Hermione or the Weasleys would be at Grimmauld Place again. 

As soon as the door closed behind them Sirius leaped out of dog form like it was painful to restrain himself any longer. He grabbed Harry by the shoulders. “Are you alright? Dumbledore told us everything.”

“Of course I’m alright,” said Harry, thinking to himself that obviously Dumbledore hadn’t told them  _ everything. _ “I know he probably said that I’ve been tricked by an evil spirit, or whatever-”

“That’s not funny,” Sirius said sharply.

“Did he tell you it was probably my mum who summoned Gabriel in the first place?”

“He mentioned something like that, but there’s no way to confirm it yet,” Mad-Eye said. “Until we can, I’m not taking my eye off you and your passenger, Potter. Remember that.” 

Harry made a face at him. “At least Gabriel gives me my  _ privacy.” _

“Mad-Eye doesn’t mean every second, obviously,” Tonks said with a warning look at the older man. “Even he’s got to sleep sometimes.”

Mad-Eye did not look as though Tonks were speaking for him very accurately.

“Dumbledore will be along later tonight, and we’ll talk about what we’re going to do,” Sirius told Harry, turning his attention away from the two Aurors. “He mentioned he’s been looking into evidence of what Lily might have done.” He looked frustrated. “I wish she’d mentioned something about it to me. I might have been able to help. Or stop her, I don’t know.”

Harry’s stomach twisted a little. He wished he knew  _ anything  _ about his mum and how well she might have been able to do a summoning. “You believe me, don’t you?” He asked Sirius hopefully. “That it was her? My mum wouldn’t have summoned anything that would hurt me.”

“I don’t know if your mum had a way of being sure of what she was getting,” Sirius said quietly. “I know you’re going through a lot right now, Harry, but we’ll figure it out, alright? I’m sure I have some books on possession somewhere in this damn house.”

“Sure,” Harry said, heart sinking.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> eyy, gabriel time!
> 
> It's very late at night right now for me.

Mad-Eye was surely watching him through the walls with his magic eye, but every time Harry went from one room to another he caught Tonks tripping over something in the hallway. She wasn’t even trying to be subtle, and she kept trying to talk to him as if to make up for the fact that she was tailing him. Harry sullenly thought to himself as he shut himself in his room to unpack that under any other circumstances, he might have actually been interested in hearing what it was like to train as an Auror.

The meeting that night went on for about half an hour before Harry realized what was going on, and maybe another half hour without anyone coming to get him. Harry wondered what Dumbledore was telling them.

_ Probably some nonsense research he’s dug up, _ said a sleepy-sounding voice in the back of Harry’s mind. Only years of practice kept Harry from reacting, but seeing no one around, he grinned and retreated to his room.

“Why nonsense?” He asked once the door was shut. Mad-Eye could only see him, not hear him. Harry lay down on the bed and tried to look like he was sulking. Probably Mad-Eye wouldn’t be able to see his mouth moving from three floors below.

_ I sincerely doubt any wizard library has information on me. _ Gabriel’s voice was as warm as ever. There was a feeling like stretching sore limbs in the same spot his voice came from.  _ Ugh. That took me out. How much did I miss? _

“I had to tell Dumbledore, and now he’s telling everyone else, and they’re all freaking out,” said Harry. “But you picked up that much, right?”

_ I noticed what you were thinking about just now. _ Gabriel was quiet for a moment. _ I overplayed my hand, huh? _ He sounded resigned

“I thought Sirius at least would be happy that you saved him.”

_ I’d think less of him if he wasn’t bothered by this. What’d he say? _

“He said he couldn’t trust that my mum had any control over what she summoned.  _ If  _ she did,” Harry muttered. “Like they don’t even trust me.”

_ They probably don’t. As far as they’re concerned your mind’s compromised. _

“If it is, then it’s been compromised since I was a baby and I don’t see why it’s different now than it was before.” Harry frowned up at the ceiling. “What about you? I’m not sure they won’t try something to get rid of you.”

_ Oh, I’ll probably be alright.  _ Gabriel’s cheer was patently false.  _ They’d be occupied for a long time figuring out what they could do to me without doing it to you, and that’d give me time to figure something out. _

“Are you sure?”

_ No. _

Harry frowned harder. “I think you should talk to them."  


_ You think  _ talking  _ to them is going to help? _

“The only reason they’re so suspicious is because they think you’re some monster. If they talked to you, they’d have to treat you more like a person.”

_ I’m not sure that’s how that works,  _ Gabriel muttered.  _ But they know I can hear them when you’re in control, right? _

“I told Ron and Hermione and my friends about that.”

_ Well, maybe tell your suspicious adults, too. I don’t think they’d appreciate hearing about it after the fact. _

“I wish people would just trust me. Only Ginny thinks I’m not crazy or mind-controlled.” Harry turned over. “If you know something that could help me convince them, that would be nice.”

_ Sorry, kid. You know everything I do. It’s not like I ever met your mom and got a chance to ask some questions. We could always go buy a Ouija board, but they’re usually crap. _

Harry didn’t laugh. “I just don’t understand,” he said. “Most of the Order knew my mum, right?”

_ Presumably. _

“So why are they so skeptical about all this? She wouldn’t have done it if she thought something bad would answer the summons.”

_ Maybe they think wartime desperation overruled the stop-and-think reflexes. She was a mom with an infant to care for. That does things to people. _

“How would you know?”

Gabriel’s answer was interrupted by the door opening. Harry sat up sharply. Sirius was in the doorway, a strange expression on his face.

“Harry, who were you talking to?” He questioned.

“Gabriel,” Harry said honestly, swinging his legs off the bed to sit on the mattress instead of lying down. “He just woke up while you all were downstairs.”

“Woke up?” Sirius echoed. “What, was he asleep?”

“Something like it. I don’t really know how to describe it, but sometimes when he acts really abruptly like he did at the Ministry he goes quiet for a few days.”

“What did he do at the Ministry?” Sirius’ voice sharpened.

“He pushed you out of the way.” Harry just stared at Sirius, hoping to convey how serious he was. “I thought you said Dumbledore told you what we talked about.”

Sirius looked caught off guard. “But that was you,” he said. “You Apparated close enough to push me.”

“Apparated?”

_ Must be wizard teleportation,  _ Gabriel mused.

“That really wasn’t you?” Sirius asked. 

Harry shook his head. “Gabriel’s reflexes were faster. I wasn’t paying enough attention - I just looked over and saw it happening and suddenly I was right there and he was pushing us both out of the way.” The spell had whistled past Harry’s ear, unnervingly close.

Sirius sat down at the desk chair. “He can take over, just like that?”

Harry hesitated. He could lie and disagree, but... “Yeah,” he said. “Normally it happens when things are going  _ really  _ badly. Back in first year he cut the ropes when Professor Quirrell tried to attack me, and when I was fighting the basilisk he took over. I didn’t really argue. Both times I was...” Harry looked away, rubbing the back of his neck. “I was mostly just glad someone was there to help.”

“You shouldn’t have to rely on something like  _ that  _ for help.”

_ Something like that, _ Gabriel scoffed, at the same time that Harry retorted, “Well, no offense Sirius, but who else was there to help me?” 

Sirius looked stricken. “I wanted to be,” he said hoarsely. “I  _ tried.” _

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Harry said quickly, his heart twisting. “You’re on the run, I know, I don’t want you back in Azkaban. I don’t want you risking yourself for me, seriously, I just meant - me and Ron and Hermione have always figured things out ourselves, mostly, and both those times I was trapped by myself. Except for Gabriel.”

Sirius just stared at him. He got up abruptly and shut the door, and rounded on Harry.

“I want to talk to him,” he said roughly.

Harry hesitated. Sirius was obviously upset. But it was the first time anyone had expressed any interest in hearing Gabriel’s side of the story.

_ Let me take this one,  _ said Gabriel, and Harry let himself be slid to the back of his own mind.

Sirius jumped. Something must have happened that was visible. Harry felt Gabriel stand up and stretch as far as he could reach, sighing with relief.

“Fifteen years and it never stops feeling cramped,” Gabriel complained. Sirius startled again, confused.

“You’re  _ American?”  _ He said.

“I prefer it,” said Gabriel frankly. “And so we’re both clear, Harry can still hear you, so whatever this conversation is gonna be, pretend he’s still in the room.” 

Sirius balled his fists up. “Get out,” he said shortly.

“Oh, would if I could, buddy.”

_ “What?” _

“Would,” Gabriel repeated, “if I could. Whatever magic your Lily Potter worked, I’m stuck here pretty thoroughly. But by all means explain to me what’s supposed to be so alluring to me about being trapped inside a fifteen year old boy’s body.”

Sirius scowled at him, which was extremely weird for Harry, still watching through his body’s eyes even if he was no longer directing which way they looked. “That’s  _ far  _ too easy to be true. Lily wouldn’t have relied on an option like that, not if it would do this to Harry.”

“To be fair to her, I don’t think she meant to.” Gabriel shrugged. “Summoning a protector in the middle of a war must’ve sounded nice! But no, she didn’t know what she was going to get, and she  _ definitely  _ didn’t know it was going to do this. I don’t even know  _ how  _ it did this.” Gabriel waved a hand to gesture at their entire shared body. “If your Dumbledore can figure out why, all the better. I’d love to understand what the fuck’s going on.”

“And how do I know you haven’t influenced his thoughts?” Sirius snapped.

“What, to keep him away from you or something? If you can’t see that Harry loves you to death, you’re being willfully blind. I get you’re pissed over being in jail for thirteen years,” Gabriel said, poisonously charming, “but don’t take it out on  _ me _ just because there’s no one else close enough to be angry at _.  _ Get your shit together.”

Sirius gaped in wordless outrage. Harry grappled with his thoughts to try and put together coherent words like Gabriel could when Harry was speaking, but if Gabriel understood that Harry was trying to rein him in, he didn’t acknowledge it. 

“So unless there’s  _ actual news,”  _ said Gabriel, “I’m going to go back to ignoring you, and you and Harry can sort out whatever you have to sort out.”

* * *

Sirius stormed out of the room before Harry could think of anything to say. He didn’t want to  _ apologize -  _ it wasn’t his fault what Gabriel had said - and he was angry at both of them and could barely sleep. Gabriel, wisely, didn’t try to talk to him much.

The next afternoon there was a pile of people coming into the house that surprised Harry - Ron and Hermione and even Ginny, along with their parents. Mrs. Weasley looked distraught and gave him a crushing hug, so Harry assumed she knew. 

He was expecting to have time to tell them what was going on, but a fresh meeting began straightaway. They were all herded into the room usually reserved for Order meetings. It was a small meeting, and mostly people Harry recognized - Mad-Eye and Tonks, Sirius and Lupin, the assembly of Weasleys, Snape and Dumbledore. Even  _ McGonagall  _ was present.

_ Oh, they’re breaking out the big guns,  _ Gabriel remarked with amusement. Harry decided to beat the adults to the punch.

“Is this about Gabriel?” He asked Dumbledore.

“Indeed,” said Dumbledore. “Hence your friends’ presence, as I believe they should know about this, and Miss Weasley too. She has agreed to provide, shall we say, expert testimony.” Ginny looked nervous and slightly pale.

“Then I should start by saying that Gabriel  _ did  _ wake up,” Harry said. “Obviously I’m not going to let him be in charge for the whole discussion, but he said I should tell you that he’s able to hear what’s going on when he’s awake.”

Dumbledore frowned. “I see. Are there any other senses I should beware of alerting?”

Harry decided to let the wording slide. “I know he can hear,” he said thoughtfully, “and he’s referenced a few times being able to see. And sometimes he asks me to eat specific puddings at meals because he’s got a preference...I think it’s all senses, sir. I mean, the handful of times  _ he’s  _ been in control, I’ve still had a full range of senses. I’m pretty sure.”

“Pretty sure?”

_ Definitely sure,  _ said Gabriel.

“Well I wasn’t exactly testing my sense of taste in the middle of fighting a basilisk, sir.”

“That was  _ him?”  _ Blurted Ginny. 

Harry shrugged. “He said he was better with a sword so I let him try and it worked.” He was acutely aware of all the stares from the adults in the room. “I was  _ twelve.  _ It was a basilisk. I was happy  _ someone  _ was there to help.”

“Hey,” Ron said defensively. At the back of the room, Sirius bristled, and Lupin gave him an odd look and put a hand on his shoulder.

“I’m not - why does everyone assume I’m insulting them when I say that?” Harry complained. “You were twelve too, it’s not your fault you got stuck behind a rockslide.”

“While we are on the subject of past escapades,” interrupted Dumbledore, “I was going to ask you about that myself, Harry. These last few years have been eventful for you. I would like to know - as precisely as you can be - how this Gabriel figures into them.” He gestured for everyone to sit, and sat himself. Only Sirius, Lupin, and Mad-Eye stayed standing.

Harry sighed. This was going to be a long conversation. “Is there anything in particular you want to know about, sir?”

“If there was any moment you can remember where he significantly intervened. You’ve mentioned you speak to him, and of course I don’t expect you to remember every conversation. But intervention - and any time he may have had control.”

That was a little easier. “Well,” Harry said, “in first year he tried to cheat at the chess game guarding the Philosopher’s Stone, but it didn’t work. I think the magic on them was too tricky, or something like that.”  _ Yeah, lay on the flattery,  _ laughed Gabriel, who remembered that McGonagall was the one who had Transfigured the chess pieces in the first place. “Then when Professor Quirrell tried to tie me up, he cut the ropes, and he came out and shoved him into the mirror. That’s why it was broken.”

“I recall you told me  _ you  _ did that,” said Dumbledore.

“It sort of was me, on a technicality. It was my body.” 

_ Excellent use of loopholes. _

Harry leaped ahead before anyone could object. “In second year he didn’t really do anything except the basilisk, because before Hermione figured out what it was he wasn’t sure if it could hurt him, and I think he was a bit scared by the idea of that. And neither of us knew if he could get Petrified without me getting Petrified, or if just I could without him being affected.”

Gabriel didn’t have anything to say to that. Harry was glad. It was difficult to carry on two conversations at once. 

“But anyway, he came out and fought the basilisk and killed it, and then when he realized one of its teeth had scratched me, he tried to heal that, but he couldn’t all the way and Fawkes cried on it instead.”

“All the way?” Hermione asked. “So he could a little bit?”

“I think he ran out of energy, or whatever happens before he goes quiet, before he could finish,” said Harry. “I didn’t hear from him again until weeks after term ended for the year.”

“You say scratched  _ you,”  _ said Dumbledore. “I am glad to hear that you’re still possessive of your own body, Harry.”

Harry could have said that Gabriel had insisted basilisk venom wouldn’t harm him, but that didn’t seem like a useful tangent to go down. But there was one thing he should probably mention. “And, er,” he said hesitantly, “over the summer after that, when he woke up, I let him out for half an hour in the middle of the night. Because he’d helped and all.”

Mrs. Weasley made a disapproving noise, and Snape scoffed with similar sentiment. 

“He just stood in the garden without moving and looked up at the sky,” Harry retorted, knowing he was being judged. “And I know I didn’t lose any time, because I checked the clock in the kitchen before I went outside and after I came back in.”

_ It wasn’t even that much time,  _ Gabriel grumbled.

“We will reserve our feelings, perhaps, until you are finished,” said Dumbledore, though he was still grave and watching Harry intently. “Please continue.”

What was next? “He didn’t really do anything major until Sirius showed up,” Harry recalled. Third year had been...contentious. Gabriel had made a number of mean comments about having to experience puberty by proxy. “When we were face to face, I mean, at the end of the year. He tried to go after Pettigrew when he turned into a rat. But then the Dementors showed up, and, well...”

_ Could’ve gotten the sonofabitch  _ Gabriel muttered as Dumbledore said, “You mentioned before that the Dementors hurt you, with Gabriel present.”

“Both of us,” Harry said firmly. 

“Hurt?” Lupin repeated. Harry was sure he was thinking of the Patronus lessons. “What kind of hurt?”

“The dementors affected Gabriel, too,” Harry explained. “Normally he keeps himself really strictly separate from my mind and my thoughts or whatever, but the dementors bring out - you know.” Gabriel probably knew what Harry heard. “So when that happens I sort of got a look at his memories, except according to Gabriel his thoughts are, er, basically so inhuman they’re  _ painfully  _ incomprehensible to a human brain. So I didn’t actually find anything out. But that only happens when he’s caught off guard by it,” Harry added, looking at Lupin. “With the boggart Dementor it wasn’t painful because he knew it was coming.”

“I don’t see how that could be true,” said Lupin, “unless he has a way of negating the Dementors’ pull on him.”

Harry shrugged. “It wasn’t painful with the boggart,” he said. “I’m not lying.”

“I’m not accusing you of lying, Harry. This is just...a strange and complicated situation.”

“Is there anything else?” Dumbledore asked firmly.

“...Yes. In the graveyard.” Harry hoped Dumbledore wouldn’t ask him to elaborate.

“I am sorry to ask, but detail is key, Harry.”

_ Of course it is,  _ Gabriel said snidely. 

Harry breathed in once, slowly. “He tried to pull Cedric out of the way of the spell,” he said. Over a year and he still wanted to throw up when he thought about it. “Then he kept getting away from Pettigrew, so - Pettigrew used the Cruciatus.” Several of the adults present winced. “The first time it just seemed to slip off. So he tried a couple spells to keep me from getting away, and - just kept trying until Gabriel ran out of energy and it worked.” He swallowed. “That’s all.”

“Thank you,” said Dumbledore, a little gentler. 

“The  _ Cruciatus,”  _ said Snape, “just  _ slipped off.”  _ He seemed struck with disbelief. Harry glared at him. “An unforgivable curse is not some fourth-year’s stunner that can be simply shrugged off, Potter.”

“Is there anything we know of that could do something like that?” Hermione asked. She was looking at Lupin, who had gone over so many magical creatures with them. “I know some creatures are resistant to some kinds of magic...”

_ Creature?  _ Gabriel said, affronted.  _ I’m a damn delight. ‘Creature’. As if I were a horse or something. _

“I’m not well studied in the kind of creature that affects the mind,” Lupin said apologetically.

“He’s not a  _ creature,”  _ Harry said sharply. Everyone looked at him at once. “You don’t have to treat him like a monster just because you don’t trust him. You’re all acting like I don’t know what I’m talking about when I’m the only one here who seems to understand what’s going on.”

“Hey,  _ I  _ said I believed you,” said Ginny.

“Fine, Ginny and I are the only ones not treating me like I’ve caught some debilitating disease.” Harry sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. 

“You are being petty and naïve,” Snape said disdainfully. “There is something in your  _ mind.  _ Of course we are treating you as though what comes from your mind should be doubted.”

_ “Can  _ be, perhaps, but let us assume that Harry is telling the truth about his own autonomy, and that he as a person is not some elaborate trick performed upon us all by this Gabriel,” said Dumbledore. It was much less reassuring than Harry thought he meant it to be. Harry glared at the floor. “At the same time, it is worrying that this has gone so long without being addressed - or noticed.”

Ginny raised her hand. “Can I do my testimony now? Because I feel like it’s relevant now.”

“Very well, Miss Weasley.” Dumbledore turned towards her as if giving her his full, undivided attention. Harry thought he was probably keeping one eye out in case Gabriel did something.

Ginny’s other hand was white-knuckle clenched in her lap. “So when I was possessed,” she said evenly, “even if I didn’t know what was going on, I could tell that something was wrong. So - he wasn’t in me all the time. But we still talked, I guess like Harry and Gabriel do. And he tried to convince me it was because of normal stuff, like I was homesick or nobody liked me. And then whenever he could he stole my body.”

Mr. Weasley silently took her hand, and Ginny clutched back at it without acting like she was doing anything. “And honestly I can’t take anybody seriously who sits here and listens to Harry talk about Gabriel and still thinks our two situations are at all comparable. He’s been in there for  _ fifteen years  _ and Harry’s not stupid.”

_ Fourteen years,  _ said Gabriel.

“Fourteen years technically,” said Harry. 

Ginny made a face at him. “Isn’t your birthday in two months?” 

_ You know,  _ Gabriel mused,  _ the diary thing was a soul, right? That’s not too different from my situation, sorta.  _

Harry was too good at not responding out loud to answer out loud, but he frowned at the floor. Gabriel must have gotten the direction of his thoughts, because he kept going.

_ I can’t do objects, I need a living host that’s able to consent, but what I am sans body is basically a soul. Or the equivalent of a human soul, anyway. I wasn’t born with a soul, and it’s not like I ever ended up with one.  _

“Harry?”

Harry looked up with a start. Everyone was looking at him again.

“Did you say something?” He asked the room in general. 

“I asked if you’d ever lost any time like Ginny did, dear,” said Mrs. Weasley.

“Oh. Sorry, Gabriel was talking.”

Dumbledore straightened. “What did he say?”

“He was kind of comparing himself to the diary. He said what he is is  _ like  _ a soul, but then he said he didn’t have one...I’m not really sure where he was going with it, but I guess he was trying to explain himself in case someone asked.”

_ This would be a lot easier if I could talk to them directly. _

Harry tried to communicate to Gabriel that he’d  _ said  _ that already. “Anyway, no,” he said out loud. “I’ve never lost time that I can remember, and I’d probably remember that. After the diary, it’d be...well, frightening.”

“Can we go back to the soul thing?” Ron questioned. “You’re saying this Gabriel doesn’t have a  _ soul?” _

“According to him?” Harry shrugged as deeply as possible. 

“What exactly did he say?” Mr. Weasley leaned forward. Harry remembered he had been the most aghast at Ginny trusting the diary.

“He said, the diary wasn’t too different, sort of...except he can’t possess objects, because he has to possess something living that can consent. And what he is without a body - to possess, I guess - is his version of a human’s soul, because he doesn’t have one.”

“Consent?” Mrs. Weasley sounded alarmed. “Then how is he able to to possess you without it?”

“...Well, he  _ does  _ have my permission.”

The room went into an uproar.

“Enough!” Harry hadn’t known Dumbledore could shout that loudly. The headmaster turned on Harry in a swirl of robes - he had stood up to establish order. “Explain.”

“When I tried to take it away it hurt us,” said Harry. “I keep  _ telling  _ you, he’s here-” He pressed a finger to his forehead- “because my mum summoned him, not because he  _ wanted  _ to be! So I think I gave him permission when I was little, and then a couple years ago I tried to take it away, and it just  _ hurt.  _ Whatever spell my mum did, he  _ can’t  _ leave even if he doesn’t have permission to stay. So I said he could stay because I’d rather neither of us were in  _ constant blinding pain.  _ Sorry that’s so unreasonable to all of you.”

Dumbledore searched his face for a long moment, as if testing to see whether Harry would crack and admit to the lie. “And what would happen, then, if your mother’s spell were broken?” He asked.

Harry had never considered that. Gabriel had been with him for so long, he’d kind of assumed he would always be there. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’ve never thought about trying to do that. I mean, it’s pretty advanced runes, isn’t it?”

_ Maybe not too advanced for Albus Dumbledore,  _ Gabriel murmured, with a glimmer of interest. 

“It is,” Dumbledore allowed. Harry’s eyes darted away from Dumbledore.  _ I’m sure he’s spent the last three days tracking down everything he can get his hands on relating to whatever anybody saw in your bedroom that night. _

Harry tried hard to think ‘better phrasing please’ at Gabriel. He wasn’t sure how much made it through. “How advanced?” He asked. “Is there someone who could figure it out?”

“Which of you wants to know?” Dumbledore was too insightful.

“Gabriel.”

“Why?”

“Er...I’ll ask.” Harry’s eyes slid to the side again as he tried to immerse himself in his thoughts.

_ Because I want to know what happened to me,  _ Gabriel said irritably. Harry repeated this to Dumbledore, who seemed to honestly consider it.

Harry said, “You could just talk to him. I offered it last time and I don’t think Gabriel will object, even if he thinks talking won’t change your minds about him.”

“And I believe you understand why I don’t think it’s wise to volunteer control of your body to him when this Gabriel is still an unknown.”

“He’s unknown because you haven’t met him,” Harry pointed out. 

“Why is it that you are so insistent on us speaking to your passenger?”

“Because I think you’re only getting half of what’s going on if you only talk to me. Gabriel’s as much involved in this situation as I am. If you want to know how he got here, or what he is, or what he wants, then you can just  _ ask  _ him. If we were back in second year and knew what was going on, we wouldn’t be talking to Ginny, right? We’d be testing the diary.”

_ That is actually a good point,  _ Gabriel acknowledged, while Dumbledore said, “Still, I would hope that my reluctance has an obvious source.”

“I know,” Harry said in frustration. “You don’t like the idea of someone else controlling my body. But what’s he going to do, run away with my body? You’re right here, and he knows who you are.”

“He may have a point,” Lupin offered. “If we ever wanted to deal with whatever is possessing him in a controlled, safe environment...”

Harry could feel Gabriel trying to roll his eyes.  _ I don’t know why they’re making you ask permission when they’re simultaneously so insistent that it’s  _ your  _ body. _

It was Gabriel’s turn to have a good point. “I’m just going to let him have a turn,” Harry said stubbornly.

“Now, Harry, wait-”

“Too late,” said Gabriel. He got up out of Harry’s chair to turn it around and sit in it backwards, making Harry miss most of the reactions to the change. “Don’t get so uptight. He’s still listening in, just like I was.”

“Why are you American?” Ginny asked, sounding puzzled.

“‘Cause that’s where I was before I ended up here.” Gabriel rolled Harry’s head in a slow circle and then froze, alarmed, when something cracked. “Fuck, why are humans so loud? I’m just trying to release some tension and it sounds like I broke a vertebrae.” He glanced up at Dumbledore. “Oh, take a chill pill, we both know that was a joke.”

Dumbledore, to Harry, looked as cool and remote as he had at the beginning of the year. “That body is not for you to toy with.”

“Nah, but Harry handed over the steering wheel, so.” Gabriel shrugged. “Aren’t you all supposed to have questions for me or something?”

“What are you?” Ginny asked immediately. Gabriel’s gaze landed on her, and Harry felt the way his thoughts turned to something new. They seemed vaguely fond.

“Besides American?” Gabriel said dryly. “Pretty fucking old, mostly. My best theory so far is that Lily was looking for something with a lot of  _ oomph  _ and a tendency towards protecting the innocent, or whatever. I can’t say that’s my specialty, but apparently I’ve done a good enough job. Would be easier to guess what she was looking for, and how she got  _ me,  _ if I knew how she did the spell...” Gabriel trailed off thoughtfully.

“Your ‘specialty’?” Hermioned leaned forward in interest. “So you mean she might have been trying to get a specific kind of benevolent entity, but you’re not one?”

“It’s not  _ technically  _ what I was made for, but I wouldn’t say I’m  _ not  _ one.”

“Made?” Dumbledore said sharply. 

Gabriel gestured, nonspecific and vague. “Made by my father. With a little more purpose built in than humans usually manage.” He grinned at the expressions that flitted across the faces of the gathered company. “Ooh, so strange, I didn’t just form out of the ether and come to cause trouble.”

“Perhaps we should find your father and have him come retrieve you,” Mrs. Weasley muttered. Harry felt Gabriel cool like ice.

“Let me know if you find him,” Gabriel said flatly. “Love to hear from him someday.”

Sirius and Lupin traded looks in the back of the room, or at least, Lupin looked at Sirius, who had a dark expression on his face. McGonagall was frowning at Harry - no, she was frowning at  _ Gabriel.  _

“And what  _ is  _ your purpose, then, now that you’re here?” She asked with more than a little suspicion. 

“I don’t know if I can have much of one with no choice.” Gabriel’s tone still held a sharp edge. 

“No choice?”

“Well, a  _ bad  _ one. I’m stuck in here.” Gabriel gestured at Harry’s head. “What choice is there, really, take advantage of it or let the kid live his life?” 

“Perhaps we might ask you, then,” said Dumbledore, “what you would do if the spell were broken.”

“Go back to my old body,” Gabriel said immediately. “I had that one for  _ ages _ and I’d just gotten it comfortable. And it would be unoccupied,” he grumbled, half to himself. 

Mrs. Weasley crossed her arms. “And where exactly did the occupant of  _ that  _ body go?”

“I outlived him,” Gabriel said cheerfully. “I told you. I’m super old.” 

“Have you ever tried to break the spell yourself?” Dumbledore was still doggedly on topic. 

“No idea how you think I’m supposed to, since I only ever saw about half of it.” Harry felt more than heard Gabriel’s bitterness. It was startling to realize that Gabriel actually resented being trapped. Harry felt a little guilty. Gabriel had only been in control, not counting in Grimmauld Place, for a few hours total over the last five years. If Harry had been in that position, and Gabriel in control the rest of the time, Harry didn’t know what he would have done to try and get out.

“What could you do with all of it?”

Gabriel gave Dumbledore a calculating look. “I don’t know,” he said pleasantly. Harry felt a less pleasant emotion behind it. “I guess we’ll find out if I see all of it sometime.” He didn’t look away. Harry began to get nervous about Gabriel’s boldness. He wasn’t sure how Dumbledore would take it. 

Dumbledore took a small piece of parchment out of a pocket in his robe Harry hadn’t noticed. “This was one of many sigils we have been unable to understand for the last decade and a half,” he said. Gabriel held out his hand, and Dumbledore handed it over. When Gabriel unfolded the parchment, Harry felt his eyebrows shoot up.

_ “Enochian?”  _ said Gabriel. “How the fuck does Lily Potter know Enochian?” 

“You recognize it?” Dumbledore seemed genuinely startled. Hermione was practically falling out of her seat in interest, trying to get a look. “What does it mean?”

“Where was this in the rest of it?” Gabriel demanded, rising to his feet. “Were there any others like this, that you didn’t recognize?”

“I would like for you to answer my question first.” 

Harry felt his expression stiffen into cold closed-off-ness at the same time that a hot spasm of anger flashed through Gabriel’s thoughts. “Alright then,” he said. “Two can play at  _ that.  _ You’ll find out what I know when I can see the whole thing.” And he disappeared back into the recesses of Harry’s mind so fast it made Harry dizzy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you may ask yourself, how DOES lily potter know enochian if dumbledore doesn't? im gonna tell you right now. i have a premise. i have an idea of the plot. nothing that interferes with either of those things will be explained. if you are looking for sense, the door is right there and u may show urself out. i am having FUN and that is IT


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> originally i was going to wait until i'd written to a point later on before i posted the next installment, but I want to keep your expectations for chapter length low.

It took a lot of negotiating to get Gabriel’s eyes on the full summoning circle. Even when Dumbledore finally agreed to show him the entirety of it at once, he wanted to be there, to observe and for safety reasons. But he seemed to be out on business an awful lot during that summer, and there was almost no time where he could make it to London. 

Harry was happier than he’d ever been - almost. The possession business meant that nobody trusted him at the Dursleys’, because it meant trusting Gabriel without supervision (well, aside from Harry’s) at the Dursleys’. He had been delighted at the prospect of spending the summer at Grimmauld Place, but living with Sirius wasn’t like he expected it to be. 

Sirius was what Gabriel called ‘haunted’. Harry could hear him walking around at odd hours sometimes, and he hated Grimmauld Place with a vicious passion. It almost drove Harry to sympathy for Kreacher, also because of Gabriel whispering at him about it. The old house elf was awful and mean, but he didn’t really deserve how mean Sirius was right back. Sometimes Harry would see him and warn him that Sirius was coming, but sometimes Kreacher would just put himself in Sirius’ way purely to be spiteful.

And Sirius couldn’t seem to make up his mind about Harry. He so clearly wanted to be a good godfather, and Harry ached for it too, but Sirius would remember Gabriel at the wrong moments and go suddenly tense or cold, and watch Harry with a hooded gaze. It was really uncomfortable, and it made the peaceful, happy moments Harry could snatch with him all the better.

It wasn’t nearly as bad as the Dursleys’. But it wasn’t like Harry had imagined it.

When he gathered with Dumbledore to look at the summoning circle, Sirius was there, because it was his house and Gabriel accused him lightly of seizing any authority he could. Dumbledore had brought nothing but a large roll of parchment, but Mad-Eye was present again (which might account for how long it had taken to arrange the second meeting). He had been hanging around here and there for the last few weeks, no doubt still ordered to keep as close an eye on Harry as possible. But Harry had already said they didn’t need to worry; Gabriel had stubbornly refused to come out until Dumbledore’s end of the deal was held up.

Dumbledore spread out the roll of parchment across the table, and Harry’s eyes widened. It was far more complex than he’d expected. Gabriel really had seen only bits and pieces, from what he’d been able to draw for Hermione back in third year. Harry couldn’t even tell which were ordinary runes, and which were the ‘Enochian’ ones Gabriel had been so surprised by.

Gabriel spoke up, and Harry obligingly said out loud to Dumbledore, “He says he doesn’t know how rune circles like this work and wants to know what the Norse ones mean when they’re like this so he can figure out what the Enochian was supposed to do.”

“I would ask for him to enlighten me on a few of these symbols’ meaning, first.”

At Gabriel’s prompting, Harry leaned over the parchment, eyes darting around for a good one to pick. He wasn’t entirely sure whether it was him or Gabriel directing where they looked. It was at least  _ half  _ him. “He says that one’s the most important,” Harry explained, pointing at the triangular symbol in the very center. “He says it’s...used as a signal or...to call out to people. Writing it down is a way of calling things like him to wherever it is.”

“Things like him?”

“That’s what he says.” Harry paused to listen. Gabriel was talking so fast it was hard to keep up.

_ It’s dumb that anyone tried to write down Enochian in the first place, given that it’s not even meant to be verbally spoken as a language. Who’s gonna stop humans from doing what they want, though? I didn’t know they were doing it until it was done. The medieval era was wild. _

Harry tried to convey the impression that he was extremely lost.

_ Ha. Just tell him it’s my language. _

“He says Enochian is his language,” Harry said. “I guess that means it would call to what he is more than whatever other things that can possess people?”

_ Something like that. But the symbol is also associated with me specifically. _

“And that letter has to do with him, specifically.”

Dumbledore raised his eyebrows. “How so?”

Gabriel sighed.  _ It was associated with me a long time ago. It’s not a specific  _ word  _ in our language, it’s more a symbol than a letter. Originally the call it puts out was my job, but to get that call right, you’re really supposed to draw the sigil in blood. Ask him if it was blood. _

Harry winced. “He says it’s a symbol,” he said slowly, “of his old job, as in the calling thing was his job, I think? Also he wants to know if it was, er, written in blood. Originally.”

“Blood?” Sirius sounded appalled.

“He says it doesn’t work right otherwise.”

“There was no sign of blood found in the house that night, as far as I am aware,” said Dumbledore. “When this circle was examined, it was charred into the floor as though burned into place.”

“Is that normal?”

“It is not.”

Huh.

_ Huh,  _ said Gabriel at the same time.  _ I guess that would make sense, because no one else showed up...but it might have been just enough of an association to get me specifically.  _ He made Harry lean in close over the parchment again. 

“He thinks the symbol might be the reason he showed up and not someone else,” Harry translated for Dumbledore and the other two. He tried to give Gabriel the sense of asking why anyone else would show up.

_ If done properly, that symbol would call and keep calling until my whole family had gathered. Or until it was broken and stopped. _

Harry related this to Dumbledore, who asked, “How many people would that be?”

_ Ha, ha, nice try old man.  _ Harry winced and decided not to relay that part.  _ Nope. No more. I want my explanation now.  _

Most of the rune stuff went over Harry’s head. He’d never taken Ancient Runes, but Dumbledore seemed to expect a certain level of understanding and lectured him as though they were in class. Hermione would have loved it. Gabriel occasionally prompted him to ask a question; he seemed to be following along much better than Harry was. Harry offered to let him have Harry’s ears to himself if he would block Harry from having to listen, but Gabriel just laughed at him.

When it was Gabriel’s turn to explain Enochian, Harry let him back to the forefront, recoiling from the idea of having to translate Gabriel’s equally complicated rune talk. Gabriel laughed at him again. 

Harry did listen, out of curiosity, and because he had promised to write Hermione about it later. Gabriel referred to the central Enochian symbol as the ‘Horn of Gabriel’, which explained why he thought it would have attracted him specifically, but the others seemed to be normal letters, though in the same way that what he called the Norse runes were letters. Each one seemed to have some special significance outside of being used to spell things. Harry didn’t think the summoning circle was just “Help please come” or something like that, and being written in runes made it magical. 

If it  _ was  _ then someone was pulling a trick on him by convincing Dumbledore to make it sound so complicated.

Harry could feel Gabriel paying attention to Dumbledore intently, and he didn’t think it was  _ just  _ for insight on how they might break the binding of Lily’s spell. But he was so unused to being only a thought in his own mind that he didn’t know how to direct himself to trying to figure out Gabriel’s thoughts as easily as Gabriel read his; plus he knew it would be painful if he pushed too far. He was still curious, and tried to prod at Gabriel to see what  _ he _ was so curious about with Dumbledore, but Gabriel gave him a little mental push that made him stumble away, if a thought could stumble.

Even if Gabriel wouldn’t let him close, Harry could tell he was getting frustrated with the direction of the conversation. Once they got past the complex rune-work, neither Gabriel nor Dumbledore seemed to see a way that it could be easily reversed. Dumbledore didn’t seem to think rune circles  _ were  _ reversible, not like spells. 

“If we want to speak of undoing whatever part of this bound you to Harry, we have to understand this more thoroughly first,” Dumbledore was saying, laying a hand on the now heavily annotated parchment. Gabriel’s handwriting turned out to be very concise and neat, and not at all like Harry’s. “I don’t believe we can say for sure, given the circumstances, that this binding  _ was  _ her intention and not some mistake of magic mixing in unwise ways.”

Gabriel was slouched low in Harry’s chair, arms crossed. Harry could feel mental stormclouds gathering. “Then what’s there to do about it?” He asked shortly. “Because I know for a fact average lifespan for humans is, what, eighty years? I’m  _ not  _ waiting that long - if I can even leave at that point.” If Harry had been in control of his body, he was pretty sure that would have sent a chill down his spine. What if  _ nothing  _ could let Gabriel out?

Dumbledore gave Gabriel a pensive look, folding his hands over each other, one hidden behind the drape of his sleeve. “I find it interesting that Harry did not produce your eagerness to leave as his first defense of your character,” he mused.

“He didn’t know.”

“Is that so?”

“Why would I tell him? If I’m stuck here I’d rather we not resent each other for it.” 

“Happily, I can say with confidence that I do not believe success in this situation to be impossible. But it will take time. Perhaps another day we can discuss this magic further.”

Sullenly, Gabriel levered himself upright and stuck out his hand. “Shake on it.” 

Dumbledore almost offered his right hand, but caught himself, switching to his left. But  _ not  _ quite fast enough to beat Gabriel. Gabriel seized his hand suddenly, pulling it out from underneath Dumbledore’s flowing sleeves. Mad-Eye jerked forward, but Gabriel stopped there, just holding Dumbledore’s hand.

His right hand was blackened, as if he had been badly burned. The old headmaster had frozen in Gabriel’s grip. Was it painful? Harry couldn’t compute Dumbledore being in pain.

“You’ve been having an awful interesting summer,” Gabriel said. His voice was quiet, but Harry could feel a vicious pleasure at being proved right. Gabriel was planning something, Harry was sure of it.

A powerful feeling swelled in him as a pale, bluish light began to glow from his own hand. It lasted for a moment, too bright too look at, and then subsided all at once, leaving Harry blinking in his own skin again. He was still holding Dumbledore’s hand, and hurriedly let go.

Dumbledore stared down in astonishment. The blackness was gone, leaving his hand whole and healthy - if still as wizened as the rest of him. Mad-Eye had caught Harry firmly by the shoulder, but seemed uncertain of what else to do.

Tentatively, Harry poked at the space Gabriel usually occupied in the back of his head. There was no response.

* * *

There was little to no news from Dumbledore after that, none that Harry heard anyway. But it must have been a good thing for Gabriel to fix his hand, because in mid-July Harry was allowed to go out with the Weasleys. They were heading to Diagon Alley, which was perfectly safe. Fred and George, in an effort to reconcile with Mrs. Weasley over their fifth-year escapades and early graduation - that was how Ron said they were putting it - were offering the family a pre-opening tour of their new shop. When they met outside the shop, even Gabriel was curious to see Diagon Alley again, once turning Harry’s head sharply in a certain direction to get a good look down the street. 

It was amazing to see Ron again, after being limited to writing. Mrs. Weasley was a little overbearing, but once inside the shop they all broke apart to run around and look at everything Fred and George had created. Most of the merchandise displays were empty as of yet, the twins not wanting to tempt their siblings into trying to pocket anything (as they explained to an offended Ron). 

Even Gabriel, awake again after the seemingly exhaustive curing of whatever was going on with Dumbledore, asked to be let out to look around himself. Harry, still feeling guilty after the realization of how trapped Gabriel felt, let him, though he warned Gabriel that they could probably only get away with a few minutes. They would both have to be subtle to avoid letting Mrs. Weasley realize what was going on, as she still didn’t like the idea of Gabriel very much. Gabriel promised not to take long and not to speak if he could avoid it.

There was a strange little door on one of the uppermost floors of the shop and, finding himself in control of himself again while in front of it, Harry tried the knob. But Fred, coming up the stairs just then, fired off a jinx that made the knob heat up painfully, and Harry snatched his hand away.

“Ow! What was that for?” He complained.

“Sorry,” said Fred, “but that one’s not ours. It lets into the place next door, and we haven’t gotten around to sealing it up yet. Too busy making the actual shop presentable. Our neighbor’s a bit strange, and we can’t have him wandering into the shop at odd hours.”

“Why have a door, then?”

“Oh, the whole property used to be bigger, but part of it got walled off to be a house. I think whoever owned the shop part here is supposed to live there, or at least whoever walled them apart did, but someone’d already taken up residence by the time we signed a deed.” Fred threw an arm grandiosely around Harry’s shoulders. “No matter! Let’s get back downstairs to the interesting stuff. Mum is wondering where you’d gotten to, anyway.”

“I wasn’t doing anything.”

“I’ll let you tell her that, then, she won’t believe  _ me.” _

* * *

Even distracted all summer by the now openly lingering presence of Gabriel, Harry couldn’t forget about the Death Eaters. Voldemort, though seemingly injured at the Ministry, wasn’t slowed down a bit by the now open acknowledgement of his return to power. Harry tried to ask Dumbledore about the war when he saw him again, on an errand in late August, but Dumbledore avoided all questions - especially ones about his hand. He would only promise, after the two of them left Slughorn’s house, that he would have Harry come talk to him once school started again.

To his credit, the headmaster fulfilled his promise swifter than he had gotten around to sharing the full rune circle. Harry was summoned up to his office immediately after the Sorting Feast.

“Ah, Harry,” said Dumbledore when he arrived. “Thank you for being prompt. I suppose you must be very curious.”

“I’m not the only one, sir.” Harry sat down in the usual chair without being asked. He felt as if he were bookending the last time he had been in the seat, in Dumbledore’s office, at the  _ end  _ of the last year. Dumbledore came down to his desk from where he had been standing on the higher balcony. 

“I did not presume, but it is you I would like to be concerned with first. I have a favor to ask of both of you, tonight.”

“Sir?”

“I would like to speak to you, Harry, without Gabriel listening in. I am aware you might tell him what has passed between us afterwards, but for our conversation, I feel it most prudent to speak to you, and you alone.”

Harry tilted his thoughts Gabriel-ward.  _ I guess I can bear it,  _ Gabriel said, sarcastically adding,  _ if you can stand to be without me for however long it takes.  _ He had an elevated opinion of his own sense of humor and liked to offer it without warning Harry.

“He’s alright with it,” Harry told Dumbledore.

“Excellent. And now I am afraid I shall ask for my favor from you: when we are finished, I would like to speak to Gabriel, with the same privacy.”

_ Me?  _ Gabriel was as startled as Harry.

“I don’t know if I can do that,” said Harry. “I mean - I’m not as good at playing Gabriel’s role, and staying away, sir? I don’t know how to make myself not hear.”

_ I can do that for you, if he doesn’t want you listening in. _

“Oh.” Harry frowned. “But Gabriel says he can shut me out, if you need privacy.” He wished he’d known that before, so he could use it as proof of Gabriel’s trustworthiness, since Gabriel had never done that before.

“Very well. Is it alright with you, then?”

“Er...I suppose so, sir.” Harry was deathly curious, and hoped Gabriel would tell  _ him  _ what happened afterward.

“Then please ask Gabriel to retreat, for now. I assume you have some way of summoning him back when I need him.”

“Yes, sir.” Harry felt Gabriel retreat, fading almost to a nonpresence. “What is this about?”

“It concerns something I ought to have told you last year, concerning why Voldemort chose to lure you to the Department of Mysteries...”

* * *

When Gabriel surfaced, he grinned at Dumbledore. “Oh, you told him something big, I can tell. I bet he’s going to blurt it out to his friends as soon as he gets back.”

“We discussed an appropriate level of secrecy,” Dumbledore said calmly. “Is he still listening?”

“Nah, he’s safely occupied with his own numerous thoughts.” Gabriel leaned forward to cross his arms, putting his elbows on the edge of Dumbledore’s desk. “So what’s all this about? I thought you didn’t like me.”

“I would like to ask you to take a look at a specific item for me.”

Gabriel raised his eyebrows. “What for?”

“You broke quite a dangerous curse last July. I am interested in seeing if you might be able to break any others.” Dumbledore reached into a drawer on the left side of his desk, and removed a small velvet jewelry box. “I must caution you. If anything happens-”

“It gets Harry, too, yeah, I know.” Gabriel reached forward and snapped the box open. He frowned at what was inside. 

“Do not touch it with your bare hands,” Dumbledore warned him. “This ring is what put my hand in the state you noticed. It was a lucky chance that I had help to prevent it from instantly spreading to the rest of my body.”

“And that’s a curse, not an innate feature of the jewelry?” Gabriel scraped Harry’s bangs back out of his eyes. Harry kept his hair long-ish, and his bangs were usually shaggy. Gabriel preferred them pulled back, so it didn’t look like he had bangs at all. It reminded him of his old vessel. But of course when Harry came back out, he always combed them back down. 

“I believe so. Most innate features, as you say,  _ are  _ curses laid into the object.”

“Fun fact,” Gabriel said dryly, and picked up the ring. He laughed outright when Dumbledore leaped to his feat, wand already in hand. “Keep your pants on, dude, do I look like I’m dying? I predate this. It can’t hurt me, and since I’m co-hosting with Harry, it can’t hurt him either.” 

He leaned back in the chair as Dumbledore stared, tilting it onto two legs. “This is definitely full of magic, though, and at a guess it looks like more than one spell. You partial to keeping it intact?”

“Intact?” Dumbledore managed, still rattled.

“Yeah, in one piece.”

“The stone,” Dumbledore said at once. “But the band...I have no particular care for it.”

“Good,” said Gabriel, and thumped the chair back down onto four legs. He twisted the ring between his fingers, hard. There was a flash of multicolored light and a sizzling sound like a drenched firework. The gold band snapped in half, and the stone, loosened from its mounting, clattered onto the desk. Dumbledore swept it away from Gabriel in one quick hand, the other still holding his wand. 

“That was dangerous,” said Gabriel. 

“The stone was not enchanted.”

“How can you be so sure?” Gabriel tossed the two halves of the band onto the desk. The ends were twisted and warped where he had split them apart, and the empty gap at either of the other ends, where the stone had held as the keystone, seemed to turn the two halves into yawning serpents with sharp teeth. 

Instead of answering, Dumbledore pointed his wand at the broken band. The gold fused back together, smoothing out the wrinkles of Gabriel’s force. With a jab forward and a faint click of stone against metal, the stone went back into its setting.

“I am not particular about the ring,” he said, seeing Gabriel watching him with interest, “but it is easier to keep track of a whole one than a broken one.”

Without asking, Gabriel picked it back up again and turned it around in the light. A flash of some expression went across his face as the torchlight played across the golden band and the faceted stone. It was quickly smoothed over, but Dumbledore caught it. 

“Do you recognize it?” He asked, and his tone betrayed his interest.

“Recognize what - the ring?” Gabriel’s tone betrayed nothing except faint sarcasm. He put the ring back down on the desk. “Nope. It’s not mine.”

Dumbledore placed it back inside its box by levitating it in and magicking the lid shut. “Show me your hands, please.”

Gabriel held both of them up in surrender, grinning and wiggling the unmarked fingers at Dumbledore. “I told you. It doesn’t hurt me.”

“And will you be with us for much longer? You disappeared quite quickly after last July.”

“Oh, I think I can hold on a little longer, if you’ve still got something to talk about.” Gabriel’s gaze strayed briefly to the ring box. 

“That was all.”

“Fine, then. I guess Harry will walk me back to my rooms.” Gabriel tossed off an irreverent salute. “You know where to find me.”

“Yes, I believe I do.”

* * *

Gabriel, claiming to be helpful by giving Harry less to think about besides Dumbledore’s revelation of the prophecy, refused to tell him what he and the headmaster had spoken about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact, when i mention 'norse' runes, its because those are canonly the ones they teach in ancient runes. i remember i think in third year hermione worries she's mixed up 'ehwaz' and 'eihwaz', two real futhark runes.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, i was tempted to make this chapter longer before posting, but i succumb to the allure of shorter ones. i think it will be more interesting to let you guys react to this chapter before I go on from where it leaves off.

Not only was the beginning of Harry’s sixth year plagued by  _ Snape  _ for a Defense professor, but he kept getting awful headaches. They had cropped up occasionally during August, but at Hogwarts they only got worse. Eventually Ron had to bully him into going to Madam Pomfrey, who gave him a muscle-relaxing potion and told him not to take it until evening, because it would put him to sleep. 

Harry didn’t feel like it did much, but the headaches did seem to taper off after that. At the very least he didn’t have one on the first Hogsmeade weekend of the year, and he could set out with Ron and Hermione to actually enjoy himself. Harry thought to himself of getting something at Honeydukes, to see if he could bribe Gabriel with something to get any information out of him. Ron and Hermione were just as intrigued by the secret conversation as Harry was.

Harry told Gabriel not to look at anything that happened in Honeydukes, or listen in but as soon as they were outside (give or take a few minutes) Gabriel asked if he could have a turn. When Harry wondered why, Gabriel said, _I’m just feeling a little cooped up._ He began to sound a little defensive as he immediately added, _Nevermind,_ _it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to._

Harry didn’t think candy would make him feel better, much less Gabriel, after hearing that. He didn’t want to be Gabriel’s jailer. And besides, it was only Hogsmeade! He warned Ron and Hermione that he was going to let Gabriel take a walk around, and with reluctance they let themselves be convinced to give Gabriel privacy. Hermione reminded Gabriel pointedly through Harry’s ears that Hogwarts had a clock tower, and they would be able to check how long he was gone for.

But when Gabriel was in charge he just wandered around the streets and entertained himself by tracking strange patterns in the snow. Harry looked down towards the end of it (really, Gabriel looked down) and realized Gabriel had very carefully tamped down the snow in a four-foot-wide circle. There were footprints going in every direction, overlapping and mostly incomprehensible shapes in the snow, but leaving no inch of snow un-stamped. It was an unnervingly perfect circle, considering how it had been marked out. 

Gabriel didn’t seem satisfied with it. He kicked at the ground viciously, dislodging a clump of dirt and thrusting it several feet away. Uncertain, Harry tried to ask what was wrong, but Gabriel wouldn’t answer him or even acknowledge him. He walked all the way back up to Hogwarts himself, only letting Harry back up at the threshold of the door. 

Now unsettled instead of uncertain, Harry straightened from Gabriel’s sullen hunch and took his hands out of his pockets. He had been almost - almost - afraid that Gabriel wouldn’t give back control when he asked.

He didn’t say that to Ron or Hermione, when they asked what had happened. He told them the truth - Gabriel had just walked around making weird patterns in the snow, and seemed to be in a bad mood.

“What kind of weird patterns?” Hermione asked. “Runes?”

“No, I didn’t recognize any of it.” Harry was pretty sure he  _ would  _ recognize any runes if they were the same ones from his mother’s spell. Gabriel had looked at it so hard, the shapes were practically seared into his eyeballs. “I think it was just making tracks for the sake of making them, really.”

“A bit childish, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” said Ron. “Maybe he was just enjoying getting to walk where  _ he  _ wanted to walk.”

Harry hadn’t thought that, and hadn’t expected Ron to be so agreeable either. “What changed your mind about him?” He asked, giving Ron a puzzled look.

“I’ve been cooped up inside with Ginny all summer.”

Harry didn’t know if it was supposed to be the isolation or Ginny that explained Ron’s willingness to sympathize with Gabriel, but he would take it. “I just wish I knew why he was upset,” he said. “He won’t talk to me at all.”

Ron put down his quill. “Well,” he said, “it’s got to be rough, isn’t it, being stuck like that? I mean - you told us some of the things that happened during third year.” Harry had not told them nearly all of it, but Ron knew enough to get a general picture, and he and Harry had awkwardly talked around it to Hermione, who seemed to understand much better than any of the three of them would have liked. Puberty was the worst, but even more so when it came up again just as Harry seemed to be finally getting away from it. Harry was suddenly very glad for the  _ Muffliato  _ Hermione had cast to give them privacy. 

“But it’s been years,” Hermione pointed out. “Why get upset about it now?”

Ron shrugged. 

“You don’t think he’s angry with me?” Harry tested the waters carefully with his question. “I mean, specifically.”

“He must know it’s not your fault. You were a baby.”

“If I were him, I don’t think I’d have gone fourteen years being nice about it and then suddenly got pissed off,” said Ron. 

“I suppose I’m lucky it’s  _ him  _ and not you, then,” Harry said sarcastically. 

They left off the conversation after that, mostly. None of them had much time to talk, with the amount of homework their professors were loading on them now that they were sixth-years. 

Even later that evening, after a long break for dinner and much complaining around their meal, the homework still seemed endless. Eventually Hermione left the two of them to go do her Prefect rounds, having finished much more work than either of them but also nearly torn her hair out with frustration over some of it. Ron stayed in the common room with Harry to struggle through the essay Snape had set them - needlessly complicated with strict expectations, of course.

Ron looked up when Harry pressed his face into his hands. “It’s not that bad, is it?”

“No,” Harry managed. “Ugh. Headache again.”

“Rough, mate. Have you still got that potion Pomfrey gave you?”

“Yeah, but I’ve still got all this to go through, and it makes me fall asleep.”

“We’ve got a study period after Defense tomorrow, just do it then. As long as you’ve got Snape’s essay finished.”

Harry made a good effort at pushing through, but very quickly the headache became unbearable, and Ron’s point started to look better and better. He went up to the dorm, wincing, and Ron stayed in the common room waiting for Hermione to get back. She had left the two of them basically to guard her books while she was gone, since she would of course go straight back to homework once she was done with Prefect-ing.

When Hermione came back she beelined towards Ron and yanked the quill out of his hand. “Where’s Harry?” She demanded.

“Upstairs, why?”

“I just met Luna in the hallway and she asked me if I knew who Harry’s friend from Hogsmeade was.”

Ron’s brow wrinkled. “His what?”

_ “Apparently  _ she saw him talking to somebody earlier in Hogsmeade.”

“But he couldn’t have, we were with him the whole...” Ron faltered, coming to the same conclusion that Hermione had.

The two of them bolted up to the sixth-year boys’ dorm, books and homework forgotten. It was utterly empty - even Harry’s bed. The trunk at the end of it was standing open, and Ron swore.

“His broom’s gone,” he said, recognizing at once what was missing from the mess. 

“We have to tell Dumbledore.” Hermione had her wand out, and it was more the movement of the wand than her hand that betrayed the way her hand was shaking.

* * *

Fifteen minutes earlier, Albus Dumbledore had turned around at a sudden noise in his office. It sounded like Fawkes arriving, coupled with a strange wooden scraping.

One but not the other was explained by an utter lack of Fawkes and the unasked-for presence of Harry Potter, who was at one of the drawers in Dumbledore’s desk, broomstick in hand. He jerked around suddenly - Dumbledore must have betrayed himself with a noise - and said, 

“Fuck  _ me  _ why are you awake?”

Dumbledore went for his wand as soon as he registered the American accent. Gabriel slammed the drawer shut and vanished on the spot. He took the broom with him, but dropped something small on the floor.

Heart sinking, Dumbledore rushed down to the desk and picked the object up from the ground. It was the ring box - and it was empty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i do feel a little bad because this is _very_ short even compared to the other chapters so far. Normally I try and get above five pages on my google doc. 
> 
> fun fact the potion harry takes is semi based in reality. i took muscle relaxants for a little while and while most real-life ones won't put you to sleep, they WILL make you very drowsy from how relaxed you get


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is much longer to reward u for ur patience

Harry grasped for consciousness like he was trying to haul himself out of deep water by a rope. Dragging himself up, inch by painful inch, he sometimes had to stop and cling to what height he’d already achieved to keep himself from being tossed back down to the bottom. As he went higher noise seemed to emerge by degrees, until at one pause when he couldn’t get any further he could make out words.

“... _ take it!”  _ It wasn’t his voice, but Harry recognized it all the same, and it made him feel the ghost of an ache like his jaw was moving to shape the words. “It’s not that hard-”

“That  has not belonged to me in a long time.” The voice that interrupted Gabriel’s was also American, but unfamiliar. Harry reached and dragged himself up a little further. “Even if it did, I would still say ‘no’.”

_ “Why?”  _

“I can’t help you.”

“Can’t or won’t?” Gabriel was seething. Harry could feel it like a storm, roiling above him, close enough to be hot like a fire was hot right before you put your hand too close. 

“If I would not, I would say so. I have no obligation to pretend to you to make you think better of me.”

“You’re lying,” Gabriel accused the other speaker.

“If you like, I could remove you the usual way.”

Gabriel recoiled. The body lurched back, but he lurched inside it, too, just enough for Harry to jolt forward. Then suddenly he and Gabriel were fighting, Gabriel trying to push him back down while Harry scrambled to keep his place, and Harry was barely aware of anything his body’s senses were registering, not even the faint mutter from the other speaker. 

It felt like fighting a huge wave. Gabriel would throw Harry down and jerk back up himself to try and stumble out a word, but he couldn’t  _ keep  _ Harry down there in the dark. Harry heard him yelp “No!” and then curse as Harry clawed his way back up. Every time his strength faded a little more, and Harry got a little farther. 

Then abruptly Gabriel seemed to collapse out of the way, and Harry was blinking his own eyes. The cold swept in to chill him with a vicious readiness, and he shivered. He was sitting in the snow, without even his school robes, much less a cloak. His Firebolt was discarded on the ground a few feet away, and a cup from the dinner table standing on the ground a little nearer, filled with something charred and foul-smelling. 

The only sign of another person’s presence was a pair of footprints, directly in front of the ones Gabriel had left with Harry’s feet. They didn’t arrive from anywhere, or go away - just two sharply outlined prints of shoes.

Harry tried to move and immediately gasped in pain. There was a cut on his forearm, slowly oozing a trickle of blood. When he went to try and cover it, or do  _ something,  _ with his other hand, he discovered that he was holding something. Gabriel had been clutching a small ring, a gold band with a sharply faceted black stone, so tightly that it had left angry red marks on Harry’s palm. 

“What the fuck?” Harry demanded shakily. There was no answer. “Gabriel,  _ what the fuck?” _ No response. 

He was only alone for a second before a figure swept down at him on a broomstick. Harry jerked back, startled by the wand stabbed in his direction, but he realized it was only McGonagall, and blurted out, “Professor, wait!”

She paused. “Harry?”

“Yes.” Harry picked himself up, wincing when he accidentally used his injured arm to push himself to his feet. “What’s going on? How did I get out here?” He couldn’t stop panic from slipping into his voice.

Still tense, McGonagall’s expression softened very slightly. “Your friends realized you vanished from your room,” she said. “I am afraid your passenger broke into the headmaster’s office and stole an item of value.”

Harry looked down at his hand. So did McGonagall. “Give it here,” she said firmly, and Harry willingly dropped the ring into her hand. She put it away in a small black jewelry box. “Pick up your broom. We’ll return to the headmaster and discuss what’s happened.” She looked at Harry again, then waved her wand and conjured a thick tartan cloak, which dropped heavily over his shoulders. Harry sighed with relief. 

“You didn’t see where the other one went, did you?” Harry asked her. McGonagall’s attention sharpened. 

“What other person?”

Harry pointed to the owner-less footprints, standing just next to the stolen goblet and the burned remains. McGonagall frowned down at them, then picked up the goblet to examine its contents.

“Albus will probably have something to say about this,” she muttered, half to herself, and gestured for Harry to follow.

* * *

The headmaster looked down at the ring when it was placed on his desk. 

“Why would he steal a ring?” McGonagall asked, clearly expecting an answer. Behind her, Ron still had one hand on Harry’s recently-healed arm as if he expected Harry to try and run. 

...Or, not  _ Harry.  _ Though Harry had told them that Gabriel was unresponsive again.

Instead of answering, Dumbledore picked up the goblet, which McGonagall had also brought back. He looked intently at its ashy contents, then with a sigh and a shake of his head put it down.

“I do not know,” he said. “I suspect some things, but I cannot prove them without a great deal of honesty from Gabriel, who even if he could answer I do not think I trust enough to let out.” 

“Surely whoever else was there was the same person Luna saw him talking to before,” Hermione said impatiently. “All we need to do is go down to Hogsmeade and-”

“I will not knock every resident of Hogsmeade up out of their beds for the sake of this answer. That would only cause a commotion I think all of us would like to avoid. That does not mean,” said Dumbledore, giving her a significant look, “that I am not thinking of ways to discover this other person.”

“Whoever it was tonight,” said Harry, “Gabriel knew him.”

“Him?”

“I could hear a little bit of what they were saying. I think Gabriel was losing his grip on however he keeps me from hearing and seeing things while he’s in control.” 

Dumbledore sat down at his desk. “Please tell us everything you can.”

Harry struggled to recall every word, as best as he could. “Gabriel was offering him something. Some  _ thing,”  _ he said firmly, hoping nobody would interpret it as Gabriel offering Harry. Surely not even he would go that far. 

“The ring?” Ron asked immediately. Dumbledore’s expression hardened.

“Whoever he was talking to didn’t want it,” said Harry, to reassure the headmaster. “Wait - no-” Dumbledore’s gaze grew more intent. “-that wasn’t it. He said...he said it didn’t belong to him anymore.”

Dumbledore visibly reacted, which was only proof of how much Harry had surprised him. He leaned forward, his eyes intent. “That is exactly what the other person said?” He demanded. “Are you  _ sure,  _ Harry?”

“I’m sure.” 

“Albus,” McGonagall said questioningly, and Dumbledore gave her a brief glance that stopped her question before it started. Harry didn’t know if it was an answer or a warning. 

“Please continue,” Dumbledore said quietly, leaning back again. He was looking at the ring box instead of Harry.

“He said he couldn’t help Gabriel. Gabriel said he was lying. Then-” The words still rang in Harry’s head with an icy coldness. “-he offered to ‘remove Gabriel the usual way’.”

“What does  _ that  _ mean?” Hermione looked irritated at the lack of any sense being made.

“Whatever it means, Gabriel was  _ terrified  _ of it.”

“Good,” Ron said sharply, and Harry swallowed back the instinctive disagreement.

“Do you remember how you got that cut?” McGonagall asked. “Was it Gabriel, or the person he was speaking to?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember. I thought...” He’d lost so much time. Almost an hour. “I was going to go to bed and it just. Stops.”

Ron gripped his arm tighter, as if to reassure him. 

“Then I could only hear a little until Gabriel stopped being able to hold me back,” Harry said quietly. Dumbledore had healed his arm with a simple spell, but he didn’t think the still-bleeding sting of betrayal was going to be so easy.  _ Gabriel  _ had shut him out of his own body as easy as breathing. 

“Are you sure,” said Dumbledore, still looking at the ring box, “that whoever this stranger was, they  _ didn’t  _ do anything to Gabriel?”

“Oh, very sure,” said a new voice, and all of them whipped around at once. “You would have noticed him being killed.”

The stranger was standing by the hearth, mere feet away. He was dressed like a Muggle in a low-cut shirt, and he was holding a glass of what looked like wine as though it were every day that he appeared in the headmaster’s office unnanounced without coming in through the door. He was looking, specifically, at Harry.

“Which brings me to the question of what, exactly, he did,” said the stranger. “So if you’d enlighten me I’ll be on my way and stop bothering you, since you all seem to take such offense at my presence.” He didn’t seem very bothered by all the wands being pointed at him. Even Dumbledore had his out. Harry’s was still in his trunk in his dorm, and he cursed Gabriel for it.

“Who-” Dumbledore began, but the stranger immediately interrupted.

“I wasn’t talking to you, I was talking to Gabriel.” He gave Harry a pointed look, taking a sip from his glass. “Don’t think just because I can’t see you I don’t remember which one is you. If you’ve got some secret new plan, I’d appreciate being in on it, given how  _ extremely  _ convenient is.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” As soon as Harry spoke the stranger stopped dead and stared at him, almost dropping his glass.

_ “You’re  _ not Gabriel,” he said in astonishment. “You’re his  _ vessel.  _ What the fuck have you done with him?”

McGonagall stepped in front of Harry, blocking him from the stranger’s line of sight. “If you can get in here so easily, you can leave that way, too,” she said icily.

“Oh, you’re protective,” said the stranger distastefully. “Too bad. I’m not going anywhere ‘til you tell me what you did.” He moved so quickly Harry didn’t even see him move, but suddenly he was by Dumbledore’s desk, scrutinizing Harry again. McGonagall’s stunner caught him in the chest a second later. It barely missed his glass, and rattled the thin chain around his neck.

He didn’t even flinch. He looked mildly surprised, and then snorted. “Cute. Try again.” He leaned towards Harry, and Harry leaned back. Ron’s wand almost poked the stranger in the shoulder. “You’re  _ clearly  _ not Gabriel, which is impossible, so how does this work? He’s not dead and I know he hasn’t left, but I can’t see him at all.”

“I don’t know what you’re  _ talking about.”  _ Harry shoved himself back, standing up at the same time. The stranger remained unmoved. “How do you even know about Gabriel?” 

“‘About’ Gabriel?” The stranger repeated. He glanced around and sighed at all the drawn wands. “Haven’t we established that’s not going to work? Are we really going to carry on a whole conversation like this?”

“That depends.” Dumbledore’s voice was surprisingly calm, but one glance at him intimidated Harry and made him remember that this was the wizard who even Voldemort was afraid of.

“On what?” The stranger didn’t seem to notice what Harry had.

“On whether you are the one Gabriel wanted so badly to meet with tonight.”

The stranger snorted. “Hardly. If he wants to talk to me he knows how to get down to the village.”

“That was you!” Cried Hermione in triumph. “But who  _ are  _ you?”

“Ask him!” The stranger stared at Harry challengingly.

“I can’t,” Harry retorted. “He won’t answer when it’s like this.”

“When it’s like  _ what? _ I bet you he’ll answer for me.”

Harry scowled. “I think I know him a little better than you.”

The stranger laughed in his face.  _ “Hardly,”  _ he sneered, “when I’ve known Gabriel since I was Created, on account of being his  _ brother,  _ thank you very much.” 

“His brother?” McGonagall could not have been more astonished. “How?”

“The same way you could have one,” the stranger retorted with biting sarcasm.

_ “Enough!”  _

The stranger turned to look when Dumbledore spoke, though he still failed to look at all affected by the old headmaster’s severity.

“I see we have been missing several pieces of the puzzle,” said Dumbledore, a little more evenly, “and this conversation has not gone any better. Perhaps we can proceed more calmly - my friends will refrain from casting any more spells to annoy you, while you may explain at your leisure what you mean by being unable to ‘see’ Gabriel.”

“Albus,” McGonagall protested. “Surely-”

“I think it would be best if this were a peaceful conversation, Minerva.”

McGonagall did not protest, but she didn’t put her wand away. 

“Peaceful,” the stranger scoffed. “When you’ve done - whatever it is you’ve done.”

“We are attempting to work out what  _ Gabriel  _ has done. This might be easier if we knew your name, and what exactly you are trying to find out.”

The stranger sighed as if the whole matter were a huge ordeal he was being forced through. “Balthazar,” he said, half raising his glass as though in a toast. “I’m called Balthazar. Now please tell me where the  _ fuck  _ Gabriel went, because two hours ago he said he was stuck in this one forever.” He jerked a thumb at Harry.

“He didn’t go anywhere,” said Harry, thoroughly confused. 

“So you  _ say,  _ and so I  _ thought,  _ but I given that I’m looking at his vessel instead of him, I find that hard to believe.”

Dumbledore frowned, his gaze landing on Harry briefly. “I see no difference.”

“Of course you don’t,” Balthazar said dismissively. “You’re human.”

“Perhaps it’s because he’s, as Harry calls it, asleep.”

Balthazar looked at Dumbledore like he was an idiot. “We  _ don’t  _ sleep. Besides, if he was, his vessel would be sleeping, too.”

“I have a name,” Harry said sharply.

“Mm, I’m sure you do.”

“The fact remains that we did nothing to Gabriel,” said Dumbledore. “I am told that sometimes after expending significant amounts of magical energy, he has a tendency to go quiet and remain so for several days, as if he is not there at all.”

Balthazar looked at Harry, frowning thoughtfully. His face was lined, as much with crow’s feet as with the marks of stress. But, Harry realized with a jolt, that didn’t mean anything about Balthazar. It was only the face of the body he was possessing.

Slowly, Balthazar’s expression changed from irritation to horror. It was like he had seen a ghost - well, if he were a Muggle. He took a step back, still fixated on Harry.

“That’s just  _ wrong,”  _ he said, visibly shaken. “I can hardly tell if he’s there or not, your soul gets in the way so much. How is he barely brighter than a soul?”

Everything Balthazar said was more confusing than the last. “Maybe he wasted too much energy on what happened tonight,” Harry said sharply, not in the mood to be sympathetic to Gabriel. 

Outrage transformed Balthazar’s expression.  _ “Waste?  _ When everything he’s told me only indicates he’s been wasting it protecting you! He might have been able to recover if he hadn’t been so busy stopping you from dying, and stopping  _ himself  _ from having that body to himself.”

“Recover?” Dumbledore was quick to distract Balthazar’s temper from being directed at Harry. 

Balthazar gave a disbelieving stutter of laughter. It faded as he looked around at all of them.

“Oh, you don’t know,” he said. “No wonder you’re all so bloody stupid, you don’t  _ know.”  _ He laughed again, spinning on his heel as he began to walk around the office, full of agitated energy. “That’s - that’s actually almost funny.”

“Don’t know  _ what?”  _ Hermione snapped.

_ “Anything.”  _ Balthazar rounded on her. His anger intensified the longer he spoke. “You think all of us are like Gabriel, because Gabriel’s the only one you’ve had the misfortune to interact with. But if this were a normal situation I guarantee you’d never have  _ heard  _ of Gabriel, because he’d have broken that enchantment as soon as it was laid on him and been on his merry way. The only reason any of us are even here is because our brother tried to murder Gabriel, and your little witch’s spell managed to snag just enough of his scattered essence for him to maintain a personality! My brother is the barest scrap of what he ought to be, and you’re telling me he wastes what little energy he has on  _ you  _ often enough that you have a cutesy little code-word for it! Apparently I could never dream of the depths human arrogance could sink to.” 

Stricken, Harry managed, “That’s not fair. I didn’t know that.”

“I don’t care.” Balthazar was giving the group at large a disgusted look. “I should have guessed what the situation was as soon as he said he didn’t want to alarm any of you. Why should we care what you think?”

“Because Harry is as much involved in this as your brother,” said Dumbledore. He wasn’t shouting, but the wand still in his hand spoke volumes. “Both of you would do well to remember that. Any danger to Harry, it would seem, is just as dangerous to your brother.”

Balthazar went very still. He was still holding the wineglass, but for a second Harry thought he would throw it. “Was that a threat?”

“I would hope neither of us has occasion to threaten the other.”

Balthazar smiled. It was not a pleasant expression. “You know,” he said, quite cheerfully, “I was just wondering if I should mention that the rest of the family is currently taking sides in what amounts to a sibling-versus-sibling deathmatch. It’s a tossup right now, which means that, if there were some way to help Gabriel recover, either of my two siblings currently running the whole show would trip over themselves to do it and win him into their side. But if something were to _happen_ to him...that is, if they were to hear that they had a chance to ally with him, and a specific group of humans had stopped them before they could take advantage of the opportunity...I do believe my sister might give out a reward to whoever could burn down your school the fastest.” 

He didn’t break eye contact with Dumbledore as he took a sip from his glass, except once he had swallowed, to glance at Harry. “I’ll see you later, Gabriel.”

Without so much as twitching he vanished on the spot, with a sound like curtains being blown about in a strong wind. For a long moment, none of the rest of them moved either. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> now taking bets on who, exactly, gabriel was talking to.....


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> its midnight thirty eyyyyy
> 
> i stayed up late ranting at my dad about assassin's creed. shoutout to my dad for being THE most patient receiver of infodumps

Harry went to bed afraid that Gabriel would wake up for him.

No one had any idea what to do. Dumbledore didn’t know how to deal with Balthazar, who appeared to be functionally immune to any magic they might have thrown at him. He had advised Harry to be as careful as possible with Gabriel’s more powerful brother, or even any other siblings that might spontaneously appear, and made him promise to come speak with Dumbledore as soon as Gabriel resurfaced. There were only guesses at what Balthazar wanted, what he meant by telling Gabriel he would see him later, what Gabriel himself wanted and why he had so suddenly cut Harry off to go off on his own. 

And only Gabriel, really, had the answers.

If they were going to find anything out, Harry would have to ask Gabriel. And what would Gabriel ask for in exchange? Harry didn’t think, given everything that had happened, that Gabriel would be very fond of the idea of explaining himself. As soon as he woke up again there was a chance he might just press Harry back down and take control again without asking. 

Dumbledore hadn’t encouraged Harry to take risks to find out the answers, but he hadn’t warned him away, either. Harry didn’t know what to do. He was supposed to be able to trust Gabriel. He  _ had  _ trusted Gabriel. Gabriel knew everything about him, about the prophecy, everything he wanted and was afraid of. The idea that Gabriel might not be on his side was scarier than Voldemort. 

* * *

Gabriel didn’t speak to Harry when he woke up. Several days went by, and Harry knew Gabriel must have woken, but he was staying quiet as a mouse and unobtrusive. He was making it difficult for Harry to follow through on his promise to Dumbledore. 

On Friday, after dinner, Harry went to Dumbledore’s office anyway, despite the lack of  _ anything  _ happening. He told Dumbledore as much, and when Dumbledore asked why he was there, Harry said,

“I know he’s ignoring me, and I’m not going to be the one to break first. I know it’s Friday, so I don’t have any immediate obligations all weekend. I’m going to stay here and do nothing until he talks to me.”

Ron, who had walked Harry up to Dumbledore’s office (just in case) snorted. When Harry glanced over his shoulder, he looked wary, though.

Dumbledore steepled his fingers together. “Well, while you’re here, we may as well discuss Gabriel,” he said. Harry was relieved he didn’t object to the plan. It sounded stupid when he said it out loud. “Is he listening?”

“I’m pretty sure he’s awake, and if he is awake, then he’s probably listening.”

“Very well.” Dumbledore observed Harry over the tops of his glasses for a moment. “How have you been, Harry?”

“...Alright.” Harry could tell Ron made a face behind him, because Dumbledore glanced up at Ron for a second over Harry’s shoulder. “Nothing’s happened.”

“But something quite frightening for all of us did happen, before that.”

Harry shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “I know.”

Dumbledore observed him again, and when Harry didn’t continue, he ventured, “Are you glad that Gabriel has been silent since then?”

“...Not really.” Dumbledore seemed to expect him to keep going, so Harry dredged up some more words. “If that night was - some freak accident, or something, why hasn’t he apologized to me for doing it?”

“So you think it was purposeful.”

“Of course it was on purpose,” Ron said. “You don’t break into someone’s office and steal their things on accident.”

“Of course. Pardon my phrasing. What I mean to say is, because he has been silent, you think this was purposeful, and perhaps he has been disguising his intentions to this point?”

“I don’t know what to think,” Harry admitted. He swallowed a few times to dislodge the feeling in his throat. It was the same problem as before. How was he supposed to put into words what it was like, to grow up with Gabriel always there; and then to go through all this in just a few months, to slowly realize that Gabriel had been forced to be there and wasn’t very happy about it, that he might be willing to sacrifice Harry’s time to use Harry's body for his own ends? 

Dumbledore sighed. “It is a bad situation,” he said, as if admitting his own secret. “I had hoped, over the summer, that you were right. That Gabriel was a benevolent sort, and all he wanted was to understand the spell that keeps him here. If that were the case it would be easier to arrange some sort of compromise, where we could try to help him, and he could continue to help you.”

“Hard to trust help if you can’t trust the person giving it,” muttered Ron. Dumbledore nodded his agreement.

“Yet over the summer I believed our only problem might be that Gabriel did not trust us.”

“He doesn’t,” Harry said glumly.

“Yes; but for a time I was willing to say that we might trust him.” Dumbledore looked at him kindly. “I gather that you don’t think so, anymore.”

Harry shrugged, looking down and away from the headmaster. 

“It’s not just about trust,” Ron pointed out, sounding a little irritated. “He didn’t trust us enough to let Harry tell us about him, sure, but what about all these other things he’s kept back? His brother, whatever his siblings are doing that’s scary enough that this Balthazar thinks we should be threatened with-”

“I know, Mr. Weasley.” Dumbledore held up a hand to forestall Ron. “I have been doing a lot of thinking about that myself.”

“What do you think?” Harry hoped the headmaster might have some good advice. Maybe something that would stop him from being so confused and hurt.

“Well, we now know that Gabriel’s family must be fairly large, and at least one brother cares a great deal for him. On the other hand, we know a different brother at one point attempted to kill him, and from the sound of it nearly succeeded. My conjecture is that Gabriel did not reveal this to us because he himself may have wished to leave it behind him - perhaps the same feeling, or a different motivation, was the cause behind him keeping secret from us his family’s current activities.”

Harry winced a little. ‘Deathmatch’ had sounded, well, bad.

“We also know,” Dumbledore said, “that out of any who could have tried to possess you, Gabriel is uniquely vulnerable. That makes a great deal more sense out of his unwillingness to reveal himself, initially, and it casts his actions in a different light, though it does not lighten the betrayal he committed when he stole your body out of Gryffindor Tower.” The headmaster folded his hands together. “This Enochian-speaking family of his intrigues me, mostly because I wish to know more about them in case they attempt to seek him out, here at Hogwarts.”

Harry sat up a little straighter. “Do you think anyone besides Balthazar knows that he’s here?”

“Balthazar’s choice of words would seem to indicate that no one does. Not yet, at any rate.”

“On the other hand, Balthazar definitely knows, and he’s a prick,” Ron muttered. “Sorry, sir.”

“Thank you.” Dumbledore gestured as he continued speaking. “In general, it seems to me that Gabriel’s motive is self-preservation, first and foremost. He is careful not to reveal anything that might provoke any of us into action against him, and protects you because he believes his wellbeing connected to yours so long as he is bound to possess you. He also conceals his more dangerous relatives and goes so far as to conceal from you whatever happened on that night. It may be that he  _ was  _ speaking to Balthazar both then and in Hogsmeade earlier that day, and hid both incidents from you. However, if I recall our conversation, you did not lose time in Hogsmeade.”

Harry shook his head.

“Then the fact that you  _ did  _ lose time later, and Gabriel was so clumsy as to be caught almost immediately by myself and your friends, speaks to me of desperation. If he was not desperate to speak to Balthazar that afternoon, and you can think of nothing that changed in the intervening hours, I do not see why he would be desperate to speak to the same person later.”

“But what could he want that badly? I mean, besides a way out of me, he’s never really seemed to want anything except a specific candy at Halloween or me to do an interesting trick on my broom.”

“Do you think it’s possible whoever he was speaking to could have removed him from you?” Dumbledore looked at Harry intently. “The phrasing you told me you overheard was, ‘I could remove you the usual way’.”

Harry frowned. “But before that, he said he  _ couldn’t  _ help Gabriel. If getting out and back to his old body was what Gabriel was asking for, why say no and then offer to do it?”

“‘The usual way’ would imply, to me, that Gabriel had asked for something else, and whatever his conversational partner offered was something he  _ didn’t  _ want. You claimed Gabriel was afraid of that offer.”

“...Yeah.” Nothing was getting any less confusing the longer Dumbledore talked. 

“And Gabriel definitely hid things from Harry while he was out in Hogsmeade, but Harry doesn’t remember losing time,” Ron pointed out. “Gabriel could have been taking control for years and somehow keeping Harry from remembering it.”

That was a thought Harry could have done without. Dumbledore nodded sagely.

“The fact is,” Dumbledore said, “that we cannot trust that Gabriel is not hiding more from us. That is both a condemnation and a badge of honor, as for now, he is also our only source on whatever information he is hiding.”

“That’s not really reassuring, sir.”

“No, indeed. But we do have something Gabriel wants: the knowledge necessary to unlock the secrets of your mother’s spell.”

Harry had been thinking about that a lot. “What Balthazar said,” he began hesitantly. “He made it sound like...I mean, as if there was only enough of Gabriel left to still be alive because mum’s spell summoned him.”

“I had been thinking along similar lines.”

“What does that mean?”

Dumbledore shrugged. “Perhaps Gabriel is indebted to that spell for his life,” he said, “as, I believe, you may be indebted to him for yours.”

“What?”

“For the longest time, Harry, nobody could imagine how an infant had survived the Killing Curse. Not until last summer, when Gabriel mentioned being immune to the Cruciatus, did even I begin to conceive the truth.”

Stunned, Harry sat back in his chair. “You mean I survived because Gabriel was already there.”

“Summoning him may have been the last thing Lily ever did. It saved you both - and, unfortunately, has left us all with an awkward situation, here and now. Lily intended to find a permanent protector for her son, but I cannot say what she would think of where it has brought you both.”

Harry hesitated. Dumbledore caught it. “Is there something you’d like to say?”

“I just...don’t know what to think.” Harry looked down at his hands, threading his fingers together. “I’m scared he might do it again and I won’t be able to stop him. But at the same time, when I think about this...whatever’s going on with them, he’s been separated from his family for sixteen years because of me. I don’t have any either, but it’s not like he killed them. That was Voldemort’s fault.”

“Whatever Gabriel’s family is doing is not your fault.” Dumbledore’s tone was gentle. “Nor are the desperate measures your mother took during a war. I would hope Gabriel knows better than to hold that against you.”

“I didn’t think he held possessing me against me, but, well, here we are, sir.” Harry sat quietly. “Could I have a moment to try and talk to him, sir?”

“If you want to let him out-”

“No. Just talk to him, and see if he’ll answer.”

“...You may go up towards the balcony. It is closed off. Mr. Weasley and I will be within sight, down here.”

Harry ascended the stairs towards the upper part of Dumbledore’s office. It was a cozier space than the main room, with its professional atmosphere and dozens of strange, arcane instruments twirling in place or measuring some unknown magical variable. The staircase turned back around on itself and went off in two different directions from the landing, so Harry sat on the bottom step of one, with his back to Dumbledore and Ron.

He stared down at the thick carpet on the floor. “You know,” he said in an undertone, “if you actually feel bad about what you did, you could stand to apologize.”

The response was so slow in coming Harry almost thought there wouldn’t be one at all.  _ If it had worked it wouldn’t have mattered. _

Harry resented the swoop of relief he felt at hearing Gabriel’s voice. After everything Balthazar said, there was a part of him not sure if Gabriel might be dead after all. 

“What does that mean? If  _ what  _ worked?”

_ Nothing,  _ Gabriel said sullenly, with a prickle of underlying unease.  _ Nothing I want to tell you about, anyway. I won’t lie to you, but I’m not obligated to tell you everything.  _

“You already have lied to me. You stole my body to do whatever you did.”

_ I know. _

“Why didn’t you just ask me?”

_ Would you have let me keep you out of it? _

“Why can’t I know about it? Why keep me out of it at all?”

_ Damn it, am I not entitled to any privacy? Why do you automatically get to tell me to look away whenever you want, you get to be in control all the time, and I have to ask permission to do something as small as eat what I’d like? _

“Because it’s my body!”

Gabriel deflated.  _ I know,  _ he said, in a very small voice.  _ I want mine back. That’s all. I used to be able to do so much, and now... _

“Balthazar said the part of you that’s in my head is only a really small part of you.”

_ I guess.  _

“You guess?”

_ What the fuck do you want me to say? ‘Yes, you’re right, this is actually only my right pinky finger speaking’?  _

“I want to know why I had to find out from a brother of yours I didn’t even know existed.”

_ And what exactly entitles you to know everything about me?  _ Gabriel demanded.

“You know everything about me.”

_ Not by choice!  _

“But why do you want to keep so much secret? I thought you were my  _ friend!  _ Now it seems like I never knew anything at all, and I don’t even know if I can trust you. Do you know what that  _ feels  _ like?”

_ I’m still in your head,  _ Gabriel snapped.  _ Of course I do. For as long as I’m here I get to experience everything you experience, so long as I’m awake to do it. Forgive me for keeping myself distant enough to maintain some kind of distinction between what’s you and what’s me. I made myself friendly to you because you were a child and I didn’t want to scare you. I  _ was  _ your first friend, and sure, you were the only one I had for a long time, so I am  _ trying  _ to spare you from what comes from associating with my family. _

__ “What? What comes with it?”

_ Death,  _ Gabriel said flatly.  _ If my siblings knew about you they would kill you to free me, or maybe to kill  _ me _. Why do you think I never tried to call for help, all those years? They could hear me if I tried. _

“But Balthazar-”

_ Balthazar was an accident, and a lucky one. He helps me because we’re in the same straits. If he’s making threats about the rest of our siblings, they’re empty ones. He wouldn’t dare betray his hiding spot.  _

Harry put his head in his hands, briefly. Every time Gabriel or someone linked to him spoke, recently, there was a tidal wave of new information. “So what about me?” He asked. “Do I get to wait around and wonder if you’re going to steal me again?”

__ _...No. I’m not going to do that again. _

“If I had asked you two weeks ago you would have said you weren’t going to do it at all.”

_ If you want me to be your friend, then treat me like one. If you don’t trust me, say so, and we’ll stop trusting each other.  _

“I  _ want  _ to trust you. I don’t know if I can.”

_...I guess that’s fair. _

“That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”

_ What do you want from me? _

“How about an apology?”

_ I’m sorry I had to take advantage of you to do what I did. I’m not sorry I did it.  _

Numbly, Harry stared at his hands. “Would you do it again?”

_ No. _

“Why not?”

_ Because it didn’t work.  _

“What happens if you find something else you think does work?”

_ I have. It’s here. Dumbledore’s hardly gonna think better of me if I steal you just to come talk to him about runes. _

“Who did you think was going to be able to break the spell?”

Gabriel was silent.

“Tell me or I’ll...” Or what? What could Harry do that was a threat Gabriel would actually take seriously? 

_ I’m not going to tell you. If you keep asking, I’ll just give you a pretty lie.  _

“You know Dumbledore’s not going to help you if you pull this not answering stuff with him.”

“Harry,” said Dumbledore, and Harry jumped. He had nearly forgotten that anyone but Gabriel was there. “If you would please tell Gabriel, that as much as he might require a gesture of good faith from us to prove we are worthy of trusting, we require the same from him.”

Harry stood. “He can hear you,” he said. “I don’t feel like wasting my time talking in circles anymore.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: so then we use the new information to progress the plot-  
> gabriel: nah  
> me: what  
> gabriel: i don't wanna tell him  
> me: i............ok.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i love writing angels. they're all such assholes. balthazar straight up has never given a shit about a human in his whole life. i want 8 more seasons with him around

Two months went by like that, with very little trust exchanged on either side and little progress made either. Harry occasionally got more of those piercing headaches, though as soon as he tried to do anything about them they seemed to vanish. When he went to Dumbledore with his suspicions, telling him that he’d asked Gabriel and Gabriel had only said he was talking to his brother, Dumbledore couldn’t think of anything for Harry to do but try and pry more answers out of Gabriel.

Over the winter holidays, though, there  _ was  _ a development. Dumbledore came to Grimmauld Place to tell Harry about it.

“Castiel?” Harry repeated. “There’s another brother showing up?” He felt Gabriel stir, but couldn’t say what emotion was behind it. 

“Should we be worried about this?” Asked Sirius, who remembered what Harry had told him about Gabriel’s opinions of his siblings and how he’d be treated by them. 

“However hesitantly, I think no,” said Dumbledore. “This Castiel is supposedly very busy, and very cautious in reaching out to Gabriel, and that safety only benefits you as well. He was very amenable to my stipulations, if irritated. However, this does hinge on your permission, Harry.”

“Of course I want to find out more about this,” said Harry, and felt Gabriel breathe a tiny sigh. Possibly of relief. Balthazar had been impossible to find, though theoretically living in Hogsmeade, for the last two months. 

“Castiel  _ has  _ asked to speak to Gabriel. I believe he expects a direct conversation, not you translating for him.”

Harry breathed in slowly. Gabriel hadn’t been in control since he’d seized it so abruptly months ago. “You’d be there?”

“As well as a few others.”

“...Alright.”

* * *

Dumbledore, Harry, McGonagall, and Mad-Eye Moody Floo’ed into Diagon Alley the next weekend. They went through Fred and George’s connection, in their shop, and to Harry’s surprise went through the door Fred had warned him away from, into the neighbors’ house.

“Sweet Merlin,” said McGonagall, appalled. Evenly spaced out on the wallpaper inside the neighboring house were huge strange sigils, not Enochian but not recognizable runes either, written in streaks of a suspiciously red color fading to brown.

“Don’t touch that.” Balthazar appeared, five feet away, half a second before Dumbledore finished reaching to touch one. “One sigil goes and then the whole thing’s useless, and Castiel will have to get out of Dodge to make sure nobody finds him here. Not exactly conductive to a conversation.”

“Is this blood?” Dumbledore’s tone was wary.

“Do you want to waste time talking to me, or shall we actually do what you came here for?”

The non-answer was somewhat ominous. The four of them followed Balthazar down the hallway.

He led them into a room also packed full of the same sigils. In the corner, by bay windows that looked out over the Alley, stood a second man also dressed like a Muggle, looking out the windows between the red-streaked sigils that decorated them. He turned around when Balthazar came in, revealing that his tie was done backwards.

He frowned. “You said you would bring Gabriel.”

“He’s in the younger one,” Balthazar said, and the other man, presumably Castiel, zeroed in on Harry. His frown intensified. 

“I have a name,” Harry said. Balthazar rolled his eyes.

“Yes,” Castiel said, as if unsure how to respond. “Um. I would like to speak to Gabriel.”

Harry felt Gabriel almost like a tug on his shoulder. As if Gabriel were standing behind him, trying to move him out of the way. 

Harry let him.

Castiel’s expression shifted to horror. Balthazar looked away.  _ “Brother,”  _ said Castiel, appalled.

“Stuff the dramatics,” Gabriel retorted. He side-eyed Balthazar. “You promised to keep this secret.”

“I like Castiel better,” said Balthazar without the slightest trace of remorse. 

“Oh, that’s rich.”

Castiel was still staring. “Balthazar and I have fought together,” he pointed out, “whereas you abandoned us thousands of years ago.” Harry felt a jolt of surprise, even though Gabriel  _ did  _ brag about his age.

“Wow! Great starter for a conversation  _ you  _ asked to have, bro.”

“I...apologize.” Castiel swallowed. “I heard about what happened at the Elysian.”

“Oh, don’t.” Harry felt something like a shudder go through Gabriel at the word ‘Elysian’. “Just get to the point. You didn’t go to all these lengths to reminisce.” Gabriel looked pointedly at the sigils on the windowpanes. Castiel, following the look, sighed.

“I was hoping for your help,” he said.

“My help.”

“Or at least an assurance that you don’t intend to help Raphael.”

“Yeah, because Raphael’s really beating down the door for  _ my  _ help. What exactly do you think I’m going to do for you? Moral support?”

“I didn’t expect...”

“What, Balthazar didn’t give you the details?”

“Oh, I told him.” Balthazar had poured himself a drink and was lounging with it on the window seat. “I think he stopped listening somewhere around ‘Gabriel’ and ‘alive’.”

“I heard you,” Castiel said, aggravated. “You also said I would have to ‘see for myself’ the severity of the situation.” He turned back to Gabriel. “There must be some way to fix this.”

“If you have any bright ideas, be my guest,” Gabriel snapped. 

“He’s irritable about that,” Balthazar warned Castiel, belatedly. “We’ve discussed this. Even if he could get out, his ex-girlfriend stole his old vessel.”

“What?” Castiel frowned. “Why?”

“I don’t know, but who’s going to go get it back, him? Lugging around that vessel?”

Gabriel scowled as the two brothers turned to look at him. “Do you have anything to say that’s  _ not  _ pointless?” He asked. “Because any Raphael talk  _ is  _ pointless.”

“If you regained some of your power,” Castiel began.

“Then what? I could team up with you so you could throw me at her in the hopes that that would do anything?”

“You and Raphael are on far more of an equal standing than Raphael and I.”

“Yeah, sure, great idea, Cas.” Gabriel’s sarcasm was dredged from a deep and bitter well. “Let’s stage Michael and Lucifer part two, the worse version, and in the role of Lucifer:  _ me.  _ She’s still older than me.” 

“You’re better than Lucifer ever was.”

“Way to miss the point!” 

“If we  _ could  _ do something, I would rather have you than have Michael and Lucifer  _ again.  _ You must know that’s what Raphael wants. Surely Balthazar told you.”

Gabriel’s gaze darted towards Balthazar. 

“I may have saved that bit for you to explain,” muttered Balthazar. Castiel closed his eyes briefly, overwhelmed by a clear moment of  _ why must I bear this burden. _

“Even if nothing were wrong with me, Raphael would wipe the floor with me,” Gabriel said flatly, after a long moment of silence. “If I would ever agree to let you toss me at Raphael like shooting a nuke at a nuke cancels out both. If, if, if’s are all you’ve got.” 

“You  _ know  _ what’s at risk here!” Castiel’s temper was beginning to fray, visibly. “You took a stand against Lucifer-”

“And look where that got me!” Gabriel shouted over him. “Do you fucking  _ hear  _ yourself, Castiel?”

“I am trying to remind you of what’s at sake! Even if you’re still hung up on distancing yourself from us, this is bigger than just a family argument. If Raphael wins, you won’t be sheltered from the consequences here.”

Gabriel darted a wary glance at the three humans in attendance. Then he frowned. “Balthazar, what did you do?”

“I didn’t want them to interrupt with stupid questions,” Balthazar said. “Unfortunately they  _ are  _ still listening, but that’s your problem.”

“Great,” Gabriel said flatly. “Thanks. I’ll put dealing with that on the list after dealing with Castiel the dumbass who somehow is living in a world where I can do  _ anything significant!” _

“What you have lost is not gone forever,” Castiel said firmly. He reached into the inside pocket of his coat and withdrew a vial filled with something shimmering, so bright it was almost painful to look at. It might have been white, or it might have been another color, just too bright to conceive of as anything except white. 

Gabriel went very, very still.

“This is as much as we have found so far,” said Castiel. The vial was very small. “I had to set so many of our siblings looking that Raphael must think we’re in retreat.”

“Castiel, you bastard,” breathed Balthazar. “You didn’t say anything about this to me.”

“I had no reason to believe we’d find anything, last we spoke.”

“And what will it cost me?” Gabriel asked bitterly. He was so tense Harry was almost hurting from it. Castiel’s expression didn’t shift. “My loyalty?”

Castiel pulled out the stopper of the vial.

The blinding whiteness inside rushed for Gabriel. Harry felt his mouth open. Gabriel breathed in deeply and Harry felt both prickling pain and a rush of warmth, as something new settled within him. For a second there was a blinding pain, as if the new thing was pressing itself onto the edge of an open wound and making all the more visible the raw edges everywhere it didn’t connect.

And then the moment was gone, and Harry felt fine. There was no difference from before - none that he could make out.

Gabriel shrugged Dumbledore’s hands off his shoulders. “Relax, old man,” he said. “It’s just a little bit more of me. No side effects for human hosts.” 

There was still something lurking in Castiel’s expression when he looked at Gabriel, as if he didn’t quite  _ want  _ to be looking at his brother straight on. “I won’t be capable of finding any more,” he said. “There’s too much still to be done to stop Raphael. I can’t spare that many people for so long again.”

Gabriel scoffed. “Not unless you had a good reason to think doing it would help you stop Raphael, I bet.”

Castiel inclined his head. “Well...you’re the one who said it.”

“You could just tell me how to do it.”

“‘How to do it’ involved my most trusted lieutenants devoting themselves to the task as soon as I had the idea. You alone couldn’t accomplish much.”

Gabriel bristled, but he didn’t deny it. 

“Was that wise,” Balthazar ventured, “to tell so many of your people about this?”

“They don’t know about Gabriel,” Castiel said, “even if they knew what they were looking for. I didn’t bother mentioning that what they were trying to find had been lost a little more recently than they thought.”

“You’re going to have them thinking you want all that power for yourself.”

“Let them. I don’t care.”

“If Raphael gets wind of that, she’ll be pissed,” Gabriel muttered, half to himself.

“Let her be,” said Castiel, unimpressed. “If you feel like doing something about that, well, you know how to find me.” Between one blink and the next he was gone (not that Gabriel blinked).

“Ah,” said Balthazar, “that’s my cue, then.” He raised his hand and snapped his fingers, and all four of them were outside the door again, on the top floor of Fred and George’s shop. The door locked itself with an audible ‘click’. 

Gabriel turned and leaned his hands against the railing, as all the adults took in breaths and started talking over each other. “Well,” he said quietly, drowned out by McGonagall’s outrage. But he didn’t say anything else. He just pressed his hand to a spot on his chest, just below his ribs.

Harry tried to ask for his body back.

“Are you offering to help me avoid answering all the questions I’m about to get bombarded with?”

Well, no. Harry still wanted to know the answers to all his questions.

“Yeah. That’s what I thought.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gee wonder what part of supernatural this is set during


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am specifically calling out the awesome reviewer who left multi-paragraph reviews on every chapter so far, for giving me the inspiration to power through this chapter and get it out. it was difficult to work through, but i had a bunch of really good ideas of where to go with the plot while i was in the bath

Of course that wasn’t the last they heard of it. By that point, the questions were too pressing and the danger (on top of Voldemort’s continued activity) too immediate to ignore. Dumbledore and Harry went back and forth for a while, negotiating with Gabriel, until he finally caved. Voldemort was still a threat, and the idea that this Raphael, by trying to get to him, might use Death Eaters as proxy agents was what finally broke him down into agreeing to explain things.

Harry was spending a lot of time in Dumbledore’s office, lately. 

“Are you sure you’re alright with this, Harry?” Dumbledore asked for the millionth time.

Harry nodded. “I don’t want to be stuck translating for him. It will go easier if you can talk directly.” Plus no matter how immune to magic Gabriel might be, letting him out around Dumbledore was the safest possible option. 

Gabriel looked down at the surface of the desk and started picking at one of Harry’s nails. Dumbledore steepled his fingers together, his face taking on a more severe expression.

“Well?” Gabriel said after a long, pressing moment of silence. “If you’re waiting for me to start, you’re gonna be disappointed.”

“If that is permission for  _ me  _ to start, I hardly know where I should begin. You and your brothers spoke of many things, of which the existence of I had never thought to ponder.”

“Do you get more formal when you’re trying to be bitchy?”

Dumbledore put his hands down. “Who is Raphael?”

An uncomfortable prickle went through Gabriel. Harry felt as though he were watching out his own eyes as though he were in a theater, looking at a movie screen. “My sister,” Gabriel said evenly.

“Your older sister?”

“Yes.”

“And Michael, and Lucifer? Might I say your father had an interesting taste for names.”

“Yeah, people usually recognize us.” There was a layer of familiar-tasting bitterness under the snark. Dumbledore paused.

“Recognize you?”

“Where do  _ you  _ think those names are from?”

Dumbledore stared at Gabriel, for once not severe - too shocked, to Harry’s eyes, to say anything. Without speaking, he raised his wand, and with a nonverbal spell a book came sailing in from a back room. It fell open to a double spread of narrow pages filled with, Harry realized with a start, Enochian symbols. 

“Ah, John Dee,” Gabriel said, not sounding all that surprised. “Surprised you found something of his to dig up that wasn’t in some museum collection.”

“Indeed,” said Dumbledore, “I went to some trouble to discover this sparse volume. What interested me greatly was that Dee called this language that of angels, who supposedly revealed its workings to him.”

“I dunno what you want me to say. _ I _ didn’t tell him shit.” 

“I assumed he was being presumptuous.”

“About angels? In ye olde medieval times? Never,” Gabriel said dryly. “They took it all too seriously and at the same time, made up some  _ seriously  _ wacky ideas about us.”

If Harry had been in control of his own body, his heart might have been racing. But Gabriel breathed with perfect regularity, the borrowed heart beating exactly on cue, nothing even sweating or twitching with nervousness.

“You did not mention this before, when we asked what you were,” Dumbledore said.

“I figured you guys weren’t religious. Given the emphasis on witch-burnings and all.” 

“I will admit to less than a passing familiarity with the specifics of many. But one does pick up a thing or two about Christianity, in this country. Lucifer is, I believe, the devil?”

Gabriel’s heartbeat stuttered. “Yeah.”

“And...?”

Gabriel sighed, overdramatically. “And family. What do you want? My older siblings suck. Lucky for me they’re limited to just the three of them.”

“Michael being the third.”

Gabriel nodded jerkily. “Oldest. And me after all of them.”

Dumbledore brought his hands together again. The book still sat open between the two of them. “And what fight does Castiel think you have a stake in? What could Raphael want you so badly for that she may come here to find it?”

Gabriel closed his eyes, briefly. When he opened them his gaze had drifted away from Dumbledore again. “Michael and Lucifer have always fought. It’s the oldest of our arguments, the one that never really went away.”

“I would appreciate more detail.”

Gabriel sighed, again.  _ “Fine.  _ Since you don’t know about all this already.” He picked at the edge of Dumbledore’s desk. “Back in the beginning our dad made humans, and Lucy thought they sucked. Took a bunch of our siblings with him and staged a whole shitfit about it. Dad still didn’t give enough of a crap to intervene personally, so he sent Michael after him, they kicked the shit out of each other while the rest of us killed each other in the background, and eventually Michael won, and Lucifer and everyone who sided with him got exiled, if they weren’t already dead. 

"And then a couple thousand years later Michael arranged to have Lucifer let out so they could repeat the whole fucking mess. Except this time they got to play with the whole Earth as collateral, instead of just a handful of early humans. Didn’t work. Both of them are out of commission. Raphael’s pissed and wants that plan back on the rails. Castiel wants me to stop her.”

Dumbledore listened silently, while Harry reeled with questions. When Gabriel paused for breath, he asked quietly, “Castiel and you both implied you had access to greater power than he did.”

Gabriel shrugged defensively. “I’m fourth oldest. I  _ should.  _ Raphael and I are the only two archangels left. We’re a grade above the rest.”

“But she’s more powerful than you, by being older?” Dumbledore got a nod in response. “Would multiple members of your family measure up to her?”

“Never. Especially not the type who would convert to Castiel’s side.”

“Meaning?”

“Castiel’s the one who helped throw the plan off the rails in the first place. Barely anyone is going to be capable of wanting to join him, much less capable of actually getting away from Raphael.”

Dumbledore observed Gabriel silently, seemingly choosing his next words carefully. “By your words,” he said, “I might assume that you think anyone who happens to be living on this planet is at risk of being affected by your family argument.”

Gabriel smiled thinly. “I have siblings like you have other humans.”

“And your siblings are overwhelmingly loyal to Raphael?”

“They don’t have a choice.” 

Dumbledore was taking a lot of thoughtful silences to collect himself. “But Castiel does?” He asked eventually. 

“Castiel has at least one human he cares about.” Gabriel’s tone turned sour. “I dunno if you’ve noticed, but most of my family doesn’t really care for you guys. Something about being the inciting incident of the worst thing that ever happened to us just doesn’t do it for most of them, I guess.” He sat back when Dumbledore remained silent, crossing his arms. “You need a minute?”

“I am not sure what to ask next,” Dumbledore admitted. “The consequences, should your sister attempt to come here, seem staggering, and our options to stop her limited.”

“Pretty much.”

“And what happens, then, if we simply ignore the problem and hope it does not find us? If Raphael were to win this argument, what happens then?”

“She’ll let Michael and Lucifer back out,” Gabriel said. Harry could feel his heart like it was struggling to keep a regular beat. “They’ll fight...one of them will get killed. Probably take half the solar system with him.” 

Dumbledore got up and began to pace, stopping in front of a shelf full of his delicate silver instruments. He stared at them as if they held answers, if he could somehow translate their spinning and ticking into some message. 

“You can’t stop it,” Gabriel told Dumbledore’s back. The spite in his words made Harry’s teeth ache. “Nobody can stop it. This was a problem long before you our your earliest ancestors were born, and it’s  _ never. Stopped.  _ Not even I could do anything about it, and I  _ tried. _ Not even removing Michael and Lucifer from play made it stop.”

Gabriel took in a slow breath, as if he were trying to steady himself. “Raphael will keep doing what she thinks is right,” he said flatly, “or what she wants to do, or whatever the fuck she thinks she’s doing, and she won’t let anyone deviate from the path she sets. If you’re smart, you’ll keep to yourself and worry about your own war, not my siblings’ world series of bitchiness. Staying out of it is the only way to stay safe.”

“Yet the world appears to be at stake,” Dumbledore said, “and I live in it.”

“The world’s always at stake. It was at stake for years and you never noticed.”

“Was it an accident, then, that it hasn’t ended already?”

Gabriel stood. “Turn around and look at me.” When Dumbledore did, he didn’t look severe anymore, or like he was trying to be threatening. He looked weary. “First there was my father, then Death, then my siblings, then me. I am the sixth oldest thing in  _ all of Creation.  _ When I tell you that I  _ know  _ Raphael - that even at my height, I  _ could not beat her -  _ fucking listen to me.” The candles were guttering in the sconces on the wall. “You can’t win this fight. You can’t even fight in it. All trying to fight will do is get you and anyone you care about killed. Your only hope is to stay here, stay out of it, and find a way to stop yourself from getting killed by Voldemort first.” 

“And what happens when your sister uses Voldemort to get to you?” Dumbledore’s face had stiffened into stone as Gabriel spoke. “I will not allow England’s wizards to be cannon fodder for an argument too ancient for us to care about.”

“That’ll only happen if she knows I’m here.”

“You cannot guarantee she never will.”

“She has no reason to think I’m even alive. She hasn’t in a long time. I did my job well when I left. So long as Castiel doesn’t snitch, she’ll never think to look in the first place, much less look here.”

“And can you guarantee that will be enough?” Dumbledore demanded. Gabriel bore it without flinching, but Harry didn’t. “Balthazar seemed to think that Raphael will find out what your brothers are doing soon enough - that they are looking for any trace of you.”

“She’ll think he’s looking for power,” Gabriel said coolly. “If I were dead, maybe Castiel could scrape it up and take it for himself. Hell, maybe he still could. It does take an archangel to fight an archangel.”

“Then why not take his deal? Why not heal yourself?”

White-hot anger raced up Gabriel’s spine. “Why not take his deal and become his weapon?” Gabriel spat. “Fuck you. If you’d ever had a sister, you’d  _ know  _ why.”

Dumbledore went white. 

Gabriel barely seemed to notice. “Pray to Castiel if you think he’s in the right here,” he seethed, “but don’t try and tell  _ me  _ what to do. I’m not anybody’s soldier. If you want to get yourself killed,  _ fine.  _ Don’t make me party to it.” And without a backward glance he stormed out.

* * *

Hermione went on a flurry of research practically the moment Harry finished telling her and Ron about what had happened. She could barely comprehend the whole part about angels (she almost refused to believe it outright), whereas Ron seemed vaguely confused about their significance. Ginny, who found out later, was somewhat impressed by Gabriel telling Dumbledore to fuck off.

“I mean, it’s bloody rude,” she said. “But I’d never have even thought of it. I mean, I just couldn’t, you know? Anyway, I’ll tell Luna and see if she’s heard of anything. Maybe she knows something useful.”

Harry kind of doubted it, but you never knew with Luna. 

* * *

“Gabriel.”

Harry was awake faster than he could realize he’d been asleep. He turned over with a start. It was pitch black, but moonlight from the window fell on Castiel, standing next to his bed. He was so still Harry wasn’t sure if he was breathing, his blue eyes picked out with an unnerving brightness by the light.

“What the bloody hell,” Harry fumbled out, the words coming slowly to his sleepy mind.

“I need to speak to Gabriel,” Castiel said, frowning slightly.

_ Tell him to say please,  _ Gabriel said waspishly. 

“What for?” Harry asked warily.

“It’s family business.”

“He doesn’t want to talk to you.”

Castiel squinted. “Harry,” he said after a moment, like he had to take a second to remember it. “Please. I need his help.”

“I don’t need to ask him to tell you he’ll say no.” It hadn’t gone well when Dumbledore asked, and Harry didn’t get the feeling Gabriel had changed his mind recently.

A flash of something dangerous went across Castiel’s face. When he spoke, his tone was almost threatening. “You don’t understand what’s at stake here, boy.”

“I understand what Gabriel thinks about it. And I’m pretty sure I know you can’t change his mind.” Harry stared back. He remembered what Gabriel had said. If nobody could hurt Gabriel without hurting him, Harry was pretty sure Castiel couldn’t hurt him without hurting Gabriel, too. 

_ He can go to the Winchesters if he wants help,  _ Gabriel muttered.  _ They’re always willing to bleed for him. _

“He says go ask the Winchesters,” said Harry. Castiel’s face creased in disappointment. 

“They don’t need to be involved in this - this civil war,” said Castiel, as if the admission pained him. “They’ve been through enough. It’s only been a year, and I’ve been trying to keep them  _ out  _ of it.”

_ As if that ever worked. _

“That never works, he says.”

“Well, if Gabriel would like to give out some advice that’s actually helpful, I’d appreciate it.” Castiel’s frustration came more easily to the surface than last time. “I can’t stay long. Just make him promise he’ll think about it.”

“Make him?” Harry echoed, startled. “How the hell could I-” But Castiel was already gone.

* * *

The Castiel issue, and by extension Raphael, nagged at Harry. It was impossible to make any progress or do anything about it without angelic aid, but no angel seemed particularly inclined to aid them. The most progress Hermione made was turning up a slim volume similar to the one Harry had seen Dumbledore summon, containg some references to Dee’s writing on Enochian. 

Harry didn’t speak to Dumbledore again, though, until the very last morning before they were due to leave for winter break. He wasn’t by his desk either. Fawkes crooned at Harry from his perch, but the office seemed empty. Warily, Harry moved around the desk, and saw the edge of Dumbledore’s robes up on one of the higher balcony.

He didn’t turn from where he was standing at the railing when Harry walked up the stairs. It wasn’t until Harry came through the open doors to stand next to him that he said, “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

Harry looked in the same direction. Dumbledore’s balcony offered a view of the land around Hogwarts, to the west; the lake and the Forest bordering it on one side, with more mountainous land in the distance on the other side of the lake. It did look beautiful, Harry admitted, even though he knew what was in the lake and under the canopy of the trees. 

“Did you bring me here to talk about the Forbidden Forest, sir?”

“Not entirely.” Dumbledore smiled faintly. “But it is important to remember what really matters, sometimes. Life, Harry. Life is what we are fighting for.”

“...I mean, yeah.”

“Perhaps I am too philosophical for you at this early hour. I apologize.” Dumbledore turned to face him properly. “Have you spoken to Gabriel recently?”

“Not really.” Ever since his presence had become an open secret, Gabriel seemed to have gotten quieter and quieter. “I don’t want to say he’s sulking, sir, but...”

“But he is upset?”

“Well, a lot of us are.”

“Are you?”

Harry sighed. “It’s complicated.” Gabriel hadn’t made any big efforts towards re-establishing trust. Aside from following through on his promise not to pull any more stupid stunts like stealing Dumbledore’s ring. As Harry thought of that, he realized Dumbledore was wearing the ring; the familiar black stone was on his index finger. 

Dumbledore nodded, not realizing where Harry’s thoughts were straying. “I have spoken to Castiel, once or twice,” he said. “I may have given him the impression that I might convince Gabriel to join him, in order to persuade him to stay more than a few minutes, but I confess I’m at a loss as to how I might do that.”

“So am I.”

“I thought you might say that. But Castiel, it seems, is willing to place his faith in us.” Dumbledore looked back out at the landscape below. “He seemed to think our work on Lily’s rune spell was very promising. He told me several interesting things about the application of Enochian in magic.”

Harry felt a stab of interest that definitely wasn’t his own. “Do you think you’ve worked it out?”

“I think perhaps I am closer. In any case, I wished to tell Gabriel that Castiel is very optimistic about it. He’s sent two hunters, I believe he called them, to retrieve Gabriel’s old vessel from a woman he called Kali.”

“That must be the - er, woman Balthazar talked about.” Harry felt a faint flush of embarrassment and wasn’t sure if it was his or Gabriel’s, but when Gabriel spoke he sounded more amused than anything.

_ I’d pay to see them negotiating with  _ her.  _ They didn’t get on well the first time.  _

“I think he knows who Castiel meant,” Harry said. Dumbledore looked curious. 

“May I speak to Gabriel?” He asked. “I did mean to ask him for a small favor.”

“A favor?”

“A small one. But with your permission, a private discussion.”

Harry looked at Dumbledore askance. He wasn’t sure he trusted Gabriel  _ that  _ much. “...Is it really necessary, sir?”

“I understand your hesitance. But we are, technically, doing Gabriel a favor by freeing him from your mother’s spell. I want him to understand that this is still something of a transactional relationship. I only thought to save you from having my temper inflicted on you again, if Gabriel refuses to take this seriously. Again.”

Well, that was fair enough. Dumbledore could be frightening. Harry swallowed his nerves. “Just for a few minutes.”

* * *

“You want  _ what?”  _ said Gabriel. “No. Breaking a spell isn’t worth that.”

“What would be worth it, to you?”

Gabriel paused, and took in Dumbledore’s serious expression. His own changed to a more thoughtful pose. After a moment, he leaned forward. “Well, to start...I’d have some conditions.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so now we have a clearer idea of where in supernatural's plot we are - the season 6 angel civil war! which if you'll remember is _not_ what was going on during tAV. 
> 
> I'm sort of picking and choosing at random what ideas i want to keep from the accidental vessel, what will and won't stay the same - it's a toss-up, so not everything (like michael corner = michael) will still be true. i don't remember half of what I wrote, lmao, it was three years ago (or two years plus however long 2020 has been)


End file.
